


Where Will We Go?

by blahblahblah97



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Badass Arya, Canon Compliant, Dark, Dark Daenerys, Dark Fairytale, Dark Jon Snow, Dark Sansa, Denial of Feelings, Everything Hurts, F/M, Falling In Love, Heavy Angst, Implied Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Incest, Jon Snow is King in the North, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Macbeth vibes, Minor Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Murder, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Political Alliances, Political Jon, Post-Canon, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Queen Sansa, R Plus L Equals J, Sansa-centric, The Author Regrets Nothing, Wolves, Wolves of Winterfell, badass Jon, jon x sansa - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-11-12 08:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18007148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blahblahblah97/pseuds/blahblahblah97
Summary: 'Sansa wanted desperately to believe him. Jon was everything the knights and princes were in the stories. Brave. Protective. Strong. He was everything Ned had wanted in the person she would marry. Gentle. Good. Kind. She so badly wanted to go back to a time where she could have believed him.But she was looking at Jon Snow across battle plans, and the storybook in her head slammed shut.'When Sansa had arrive at Castle Black, he promised 'Where will we go?' Later, he promised he'd protect her. But two wars were coming, and what if he can't do both?Before the Battle of the Bastards and the aftermath. Leaving for Dragonstone and the aftermath. The War for the Dawn and the Iron Throne, before, during and the aftermath.(Not describing this very well but if you like darker Jon and Sansa and darker everyone, this is for you!)





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! First time GOT writer here. I basically fell down a Jonsa rabbit hole and went to write a one-shot and it turned into a 36,000 words beast. I regret nothing. I'm sorry but the chemistry is OFF THE CHARTS. And I love writing messed up, dark, characters who are marshmallows in love. What can I say. Scenes you recognise from episodes is usually the diaglogue from the episode, but I've added to it. And there isn't an awful lot of show dialogue. So those words aren't mine! I hope you enjoy and I'll be uploading Chapter 2 on Friday.

CHAPTER ONE

 

After I have travelled so far  
We'd set the fire to the third bar  
We'd share each other like an island  
Until exhausted, close our eyelids.

-'Set Fire To the Third Bar' by Snow Patrol. 

  
When Sansa was a young girl, she wanted a prince. Fascinated by the stories told by Septa Mordane and her mother, she forgot about the parts with Mad Kings. She saw only a chance to escape far away from the chill of Winterfell, to be loved by someone powerful, and to be the most beautiful woman in the kingdoms.  
When Sansa was thirteen, she wanted a prince who would be king. So, she focused her attentions on Joffrey, her lovely lion prince. She had not realised that danger, true danger lay in the hearts of men. Her time in Kings Landing was imprisonment, her long dreamed for prince a monster.  
When Sansa was fourteen, she wanted the King in the North. She wanted her brother. She wanted desperately to escape Kings Landing, to escape being ‘Little Bird,’ to escape passing her Father’s rotting head every day. To escape the beatings and torment from the lion king. She wanted Joffrey to pay.  
_‘Maybe he’ll bring me yours.’_  
When Sansa was a little older, she wanted the Knight of Roses. She wanted High Garden, roses, ladies drinking tea. She wanted the sister she desperately missed.  
She got the Imp instead. Shackled further to Kings Landing, a lone wolf among lions. Tyrion was kind, for a lion. It was humiliating for her but afforded her a little protection. Tyrion did not push, and for that she was grateful. With Tyrion she felt like maybe she wasn’t the only prisoner to the Lannister’s. All she had to do was wait for Robb. Her brave, strapping brother, the King in the North. He would come for her.  
Until he lost his head and her Mother’s body was returned to the river, and Sansa’s hope died with them.  
When the lion king fell, Sansa got a liar who wore the face of a friend. Littlefinger did as he promised so long ago- he took her from Kings Landing. She was no longer a prisoner, but by no means was she free. Littlefinger rarely showed his true colours. His words were half truths and lies, his eyes always watching. He was more adept at lying than even Cersei- but he was just a man, and all men had weakness. His eyes gave away what his lips did not, and Sansa knew what he wanted.  
He wanted power, and he wanted her.  
It was only when he sold her to the Bolton’s she realised he would sacrifice her for that power.  
When Sansa was eighteen, she got a monster. She walked through the godswood, wearing a dress as white as the snow falling and hoped that it could not be as bad as being married to a Lannister. She had escaped people who murdered her family, to be sold to people who murdered her family.  
But nothing could have prepared her for her suffering. Each day she got imprisonment and loneliness, each night the nightmare that wore the mask of her husband returned and did unspeakable things to her. She tried not to cry, for that gave him more pleasure. But some nights the pain he caused was so intense that she cried, low, guttural noises, like a wolf howling to the moon.  
But there was no pack to go back to.  
When Sansa was a little older in body and eons in soul, she concluded death was better than bondage. So, she jumped off Winterfell with a friend, who was an enemy, who was a brother, determined that if she would die it would be whilst some of her was still left.  
A few days later, Sansa got tired. Tired of running. Cold to the bone. The barking and snapping of dogs behind them, feet crunching in the snow. Theon told her to run, that he’d hold them off, but they both knew he could not.  
And then she got a sworn sword. Brienne of Tarth was surprisingly gentle despite her size, oozing both a ferocity and a kindness that made Sansa want to weep. Brienne had found her before, with words of a promise to her mother. Seeing Brienne now reminded her desperately of Catelyn Stark. She had already turned the woman down once, and where had that gotten her?  
So, the pledge was made, by the old gods and the new.

When Sansa was nearly nineteen, she found the Commander of the Night’s Watch. Except he wasn’t, anymore. He had been betrayed by his people. He was hardened and unlike the boy she knew from Winterfell. When Sansa saw Jon again after so many years apart, time stopped. Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt rooted to the spot. Part of her thought it must not have been him. He looked so different, his face impossibly pale, scratching scars around his eyes. He looked tired in a way no hours of sleep would help. The sort of tired Sansa felt in her bones. No matter how different he looked, she would know his face anywhere. The faces of her family members were all she saw- constantly etched into her brain. They were all lost to her in everything but memory.  
Her eyes were rooted to him as he slowly clunked down the stairs, his feet heavy as the gravitational pull drew him to her. They had never been close. Not like the others. Jon had never been a brother to her. She had always corrected ‘half-brother’ and ignored the hurt in his eyes. Ignored him. But he was right here in front of her, and suddenly he was Father, and Robb, and every prince and knight she remembered from her stories. Every good one. He was the only piece of her life left. And as they surged towards each other, arms wrapped tight as they clung together, those pieces- his and hers- clicked into place, forever intertwined, never to be separated again.  
They’re in the Lord Commander’s rooms, Jon’s belongings unceremoniously dumped back in the room. His friend, Edd, seemed relieved. They had been there for hours, basking in each other’s presence. The golden glow of reunion could only last so long, though, as the inevitable question came from both of them-  
What happened to you?  
His eyes were as black as the night, like Winter had come long before the white raven flew. They only darkened as through the night Sansa told him everything she felt she could. Her time and torment in Kings Landing. The kindness of Margaery Tyrell and her family. The tricky nature of Littlefinger. The violation of her mind and body by Ramsey, in Winterfell no less. Her home.  
To anyone else, Sansa would have rather had her eyes pecked out by ravens than tell them what happened. The ghosts that haunted her. Her Father. Her Mother. Robb. The thought of losing Bran and Rickon. But there was something in the eyes of Jon Snow that told her she was not the only wolf who lay awake at night.  
In return, he told her of his time at The Wall. Going beyond it. His time among Wildlings, Ygritte. The Battle of Castle Black. He told her of the White Walkers, the unbelievable things he had seen. He told her of the attempted evacuation of Hard Home, and the ultimate destruction of it. He told her of Stannis Baratheon and eventually, told her of his death. The betrayal by his brothers, who stabbed him in the back. Sansa would have thought he was talking in riddles, but she had seen the way people were looking at Jon, like they had seen a ghost. And then there was The Red Woman, who parted the crowd like the oceans when she passed. Though Sansa had not seen many magical and impossible things, she had seen the cruelty and cunning of humans. And no matter what the world, that would remain the same.

“Where will you go?” Sansa asks him after a while, all the while thinking,  
_Please don’t leave me. I need you. You need me. we need each other. We’re family._  
“Where will we go.”  
_I could never leave you. You are blood of my blood. Part of my soul. The pack has been divided long enough._ Jon swore this to himself, and to their family.  
Sansa allowed herself to smile, her heart singing. “Where will we go,” she confirmed.  
Jon couldn’t help but smile back. It’s like she was a ghost, one of the many that had haunted him since he left for the Night’s Watch. But she was here, right here, and he couldn’t stop himself from touching her to remember that. A hand on the small of her back as he led her into the building. His fingers brushing hers as he handed her a bowl of hot broth. Those same fingers settling lightly on her wrist, the steady thrumming beneath reminding him this is real.  
Sansa couldn’t help but touch him too. She leaned back into his steady hand as he guided her up the steps. Swiped her thumb over the skin of his calloused hands gratefully as he gives her food. And when his fingers settled on her wrist, she took his hand in hers. So long she had thought she was alone in the world. The fact she hadn’t heard news of Arya or Jon until she met Brienne meant she already presumed them dead. She couldn’t afford the pain of losing anyone else by daring to hope.  
But here he was before her, his dark, curious eyes illuminated in the fire. Looking into them was like a reflection of her soul- they had not been through the same, but when he said  
_“we should never have left Winterfell,”_  
so vehemently, she knew pain and suffering were not hers alone.  
Her Father had once told her  
_‘the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.’_  
And Sansa finally understood what he meant.

“There’s only one place we can go,” Sansa said finally. “Home.” The word was foreign on her lips. Winterfell was not home when she was with the Bolton’s. Winterfell was a place full of ghosts. Even she could hear the suggestion in her tone. The price of what she’s asking.  
“Do you expect the Bolton’s to pack up and leave?” she also heard the sarcasm in his. The want to make her see sense, that it was suicide. Sansa wanted him to see the truth- there was nowhere else to go. They would never be safe.  
Sansa’s chin was stubbornly set as she said, “We’ll take it back from them,” as if it was the simplest thing in the world. Jon shook his head, the clanging of swords and the screams of the dying ringing in his ears.  
“I don’t have an army.” Jon refused to fight. He’s tired, tired in his bones. He’s done nothing but fight since he left Winterfell, and now he has no one to fight for him.  
Sansa’s eyes were as hard as ice, her tone glacial. If Jon wanted to throw up her past in her face, she could throw up his. “How many wildlings did you save?”  
“They didn’t come here to serve me.” Jon’s voice was firm, pleading. Don’t ask this of me. “They don’t owe me anything.”  
And that was Jon all over. Kind. Honest. Humble. He had risked his life, the lives of his men, to help people who once tried to kill him. Simply because it was the right thing to do. Sansa would not begrudge him that. She admired it. It made him a good man.  
And good men got killed.  
“They owe you their lives.” Sansa had learnt many things from the Lannister’s. Lannister always paid their debt, and made sure others paid theirs.  
She had risen by this point, her spine straight and her head high. Jon had risen also and made his case. He was done fighting. He told her of the things he had seen and done. The price he had paid.  
“I’ve fought. And I lost.”  
He wanted it to stop. Sansa understood. But she also knew he would be trading fighting for running, and that was just as bad. He was bone tired, but adamant. Sansa could see him wavering when she told him,  
“we’ll never be safe.” Jon faltered, just slightly. She took her shot, her earnest eyes searching his.  
“I want you to help me. But I’ll do it myself if I have to.”  
And that sealed their fate. Because wherever she went, so would he.  
Then came the letter. Dread pooled in Sansa as she snatched the letter from Jon, his eyes pleading her not to read, but nothing Ramsey Bolton could write would surprise her after it said he had Rickon. Her heart tightened painfully. Her baby brother may still be alive, but he would not survive this coming war. When she looked at Jon, his eyes distraught, she didn’t have the heart to tell him. She wanted to believe they could save him. She had to believe there was a chance. She read the threat from Ramsey around the lump in her throat. She knew even if Jon struck that bargain Ramsey would never stick to it. She watched his reaction to her words, his knuckles white, his eyes stormy, and when they met hers it was like watching a hurricane tearing through a small village. There would be nothing but destruction in their wake.  
“We’re marching on the Bolton’s. We are saving Rickon and we’re retaking Winterfell,” he tells the room grimly. They would take back Winterfell, or they would die trying.

Sansa had learned that knowledge was the most important thing you could have. She had the best teachers, after all. So, she sat in on Jon’s war councils, from Castle Black to the war tent in the woods as they travelled to the different houses. She listened. She offered council when she could, but she did not know war, bloodshed or the battlefield. She had not held a sword in her hand.  
What Sansa knew was people. So, she flattered, and was kind. She reminded them of her Father, of his gratitude for their loyalty. When trying to rally the bannermen she wore her hair in a long red braid like her Mother, knowing the guilt of what happened to the Stark’s was a bitterness left in the mouth of the North. She stood, her Mother’s ghost, moving pieces on the board. The North would remember. Sansa would make sure of it. They went to House Mormont, with little Lyanna at the helm. Sansa’s flattery didn’t do much then, and the girl’s words had stung.  
But Sansa’s words rang true, the truth she had held all this time through everything, as she did what it took to survive. “I am a Stark. I will always be a Stark.”  
It was Davos that convinced Lyanna, and with the promise of their first men- as little as the number may be- gave them a little hope. “Jon is as much a Stark as I am,” she would tell them when they asked why they should fight for a bastard. Sansa felt that lie. In the dark of the night she would admit to herself that she would never feel that way about a brother.  
Then came word that the Karstarks and the Umber’s had declared for House Bolton. The realisation that it would only be the smaller houses they could convince. When more houses refused the call than answered it, Sansa could feel worry start to seep into her bones. Even with the number of free folk grateful and loyal to Jon, it wasn’t enough. With House Mazin it wasn’t enough. With House Hornwood it wasn’t enough.  
Sansa tried to tell Jon. But it was all he could get. Alone in her tent, she swallowed her bitterness and sent a raven to Littlefinger.  
They fought like cat and dog, her and Jon. Polar opposites, constantly disagreeing. Different experiences left them jaded and untrusting, different teachings gave them different approaches.  
But when it came to the parley, face to face with the monster that still haunted her nightmares, brandishing Shaggydog’s head on a spike, all the tension between the two of them faded away. They were one, united, and Sansa could feel the pieces of their souls curved together. Any disagreements were between them and no one else. Jon had told her she didn’t need to be here, trying to protect her. He didn’t realise that no one could.  
Ramsey talked big, trying to get a reaction. His words and lecherous look crept under her skin, peeling away layers like his house sigil, like he had tried to many times. Sansa kept his gaze.  
“You’re going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton. Sleep well.”  
Then she turned and rode away, trying to hold in her scream.  
Sansa did not know battle. But she did know Ramsey. And she knew Jon. He was loyal, and brave, but incredibly headstrong and impatient. She understood the urgency- Rickon was her brother too- but Ramsey was playing with him, taunting him, and Jon was clay in his hands.  
“We need more men!” she urged him, her hands clasped in front of her. Jon whirled on her, anger pulsing through him. Did she not think he knew this? That he had tried? They had gone from house to house, begging for help. He had been over the plans with Davos and Tormund until his eyes could no longer see, trying to find some way in which they might win this. He had fought unimaginable things. He had fought the dead. He had fought his own men. But this- trying to fight an impossible battle for their family, for their home, for _her_ \- he had never had a fight like this.  
“We have all the men we’re going to get. We’ve recruited all the men who’ll fight for us!”  
“It’s not enough!” she cried. If he would only wait, if he would only listen to her. She couldn’t put it easily into words, the sense of foreboding she felt, the dread coiled tightly inside her. No words she spoke would do Ramsey’s twisted mind justice, would show Jon that no matter what he planned it would be exactly what Ramsey wanted. She wanted him to acknowledge that he had made a mistake. That he should have asked for her council sooner. Sansa did not know battle, but she knew people. Maybe if they had more time. But that’s one thing the Stark’s had never been granted- enough time. They were constantly on the run against a ticking clock, trying to beat the sand in the hourglass.  
“Battles have been won against greater odds.” There is nothing more Jon could say. He heard her, he saw her, but it was too late. Ramsey had their home and he had Rickon, and if they did not stage this one last fight, he would quite possibly get Sansa again.  
Then we will lose, Sansa thought. Her eyes pierced his, her voice steely.  
“If Ramsey wins, I am not going back there alive. Do you understand me?” She would not go back to him. She was willing to die to get away from him once. She wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.  
Jon slumped slightly, affected. He knew Sansa well enough by now. Knew when she was bluffing, but nothing in her showed any signs of a lie. She meant was she said. The horrors she faced at the hands of Ramsey Bolton made death look like a sweet release. She was here, right in front of him, kissed by fire and with ice in her veins, her once porcelain skin now steel. Something had changed when she fell into his arms at Castle Black, some part of him tethered forever to her. The thought of losing her was unbearable now- she was all he had in the world.  
The atrocities she had seen and had done against her weren’t fair, even to a silly young girl with dreams. Just as the travesties done to him weren’t fair to the young, idealistic boy who wanted nothing more than to be a knight. They had always been the two who had most believed in the tall tales of their childhood. He wasn’t a knight and she wasn’t a princess. But ever part of him wanted to protect her, like the stories they loved so. His voice was gentle as he made a promise. “I won’t ever let him touch you again. I’ll protect you. I promise.”  
Sansa wanted desperately to believe him. Jon was everything the knights and princes were in the stories. Brave. Protective. Strong. He was everything Ned had wanted in the person she would marry. Gentle. Good. Kind. She so badly wanted to go back to a time where she could have believed him.  
But she was looking at Jon Snow across battle plans, and the storybook in her head slammed shut.  
“No one can protect me. No one can protect anyone.”

The Battle for Winterfell was nothing like her experience of Stannis Baratheon’s attempted take on Kings Landing. In her newfound wisdom Sansa could see that then she did not have much to lose, despite her fear. There was the hope that Joffrey would be slain, the Lannister’s snuffed out and her suffering ended, either by freedom or the blade of a knife. But here, on a battle field with the stench of death, blood and adrenaline hitting her, the only music was the clanging of weapons and the screams of the dying. There would be no one to sing to comfort them. No one to cry for them. No hands clasped in prayer. There was only Winterfell or death.  
They were losing, Sansa could see with a grim realisation when she arrived on the field with Littlefinger, Yohn Royce and the knights of the Vale. The Bolton forces were overwhelming their people, crushing them, and in the chaos, she couldn’t see Jon. It was only when the knights broke the Bolton’s phalanx that she spotted him. She hadn’t seen fighting like it. With Joffrey it was all showing off and pretend, bravado. Jon fought with a grim determination, cutting down men like they were nothing, with an intensity and burning fury that would have frightened her if it wasn’t Jon.  
Her eyes followed an intense battle between Tormund and Smalljon Umber when out of the corner of her eye she saw something. It was Ramsey, watching his unfolding defeat with a twisted fury before turning his horse and heading back to Winterfell. He’s going to get away, a voice in her head screamed. Then, the ground shook as Jon tore across the battlefield after him, Tormund and Wun Wun right behind him.  
No, he isn’t, a voice whispered as she ushered on the reins and raced after them.

Jon barely saw the demented smile on Ramsey’s bloody face as he beat him. He saw Rickon. He saw him as a baby. Learning to walk. Telling stories. Running through Winterfell. He saw his fear as he runs from Ramsey. He saw him being struck down, his lifeless body in his arms. He saw his brother, Robb, being betrayed by Roose Bolton. He saw Shaggydog’s head on a spike. He saw so much red he thought if he started screaming, he would never stop. He saw Sansa as she arrived at Castle Black- frightened, jittery and bruised. He heard her hisses as Brienne tried to fix her wounds as best she could. He heard her screams in the middle of the night, the blind panic in her eyes. He saw the flat truth in her face as she told him she wouldn’t go back to Ramsey alive. He saw so much red he couldn’t think, he couldn’t hear, he was blinded.  
There was a change in the atmosphere, the tie that bound him to Sansa loosening, the pain in his chest easing at the soothing balm of her presence, and the red mist parted long enough for him to see her. He did a double take. She had been in his head so much he was almost surprised to see her here, in the courtyard of Winterfell, Tormund’s arm blocking her from going further.  
“You don’t need to see this,” Tormund told her, and Jon could hear her answer as she sidestepped the wildling and stumbled towards Jon, her face pale and shocked, but not scared.  
“Yes, I do.” She stared, fixated on Jon still pinning Ramsey, the man’s head lolling under him. He understood that as angry as he was, this was not his kill to make. He would do it for her, if she asked. But the decision had to be hers. She stared stonily at Ramsey but did not give him a nod. Jon staggered to his feet, throwing his sword to the ground.  
“Lock him up,” he spat.  
“Take him to the kennels,” Sansa’s voice rang out and left no room for argument. As more of their forces poured into Winterfell, bringing in injured, Jon turned to Tormund.  
“Do as she says.”

When Sansa was nineteen, she got her first kill. She had considered many ways in which to rid the world of Ramsey. But his dogs, his loyal, starving dogs and favourite threat, were the way she decided to go.  
For so long he had been her tormentor. He did unspeakable things to her body and mind, inflicted horrors on her. But here, locked in a kennel, she realised he is just a man. A horrific part of her story, but one that would fade like the scars he had given her, nonetheless.  
“Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear.”  
Sansa watched her husband be eaten alive by his dogs for a few moments, relishing in his screams. She turned her back on him for the last time and smiled.  
All memory of Ramsey Bolton would disappear.  
But she would keep that one for a while.  
When Sansa was nineteen, they won back Winterfell. The banners of House Stark flew again. A girl and a bastard had won the battle for the North. Except they weren’t, now. She was now Lady of Winterfell. And Jon was King in the North. They sat where Ned and Catelyn had once sat, the people of the North now theirs. She sat to his left as he stood, uncomfortable with the chants started by Lyanna Mormont of  
_‘King in the North!’_  
_S_ he had always wanted to be a princess. And Jon had always wanted to be a knight. They would never fulfil their childhood dreams, too scarred, tarred and blackened by the cruelty of the world. The disillusions they had were shattered and the reality of the world had seeped into their bones. Yet somehow, she, a girl, had found herself the Lady of Winterfell, charged with it and all its people. And Jon, Ned Stark’s bastard, was now King in the North.  
She couldn’t help but wonder what the price would be. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa had been Lady of Winterfell for nine months when the debt collector finally called.   
> It came in the form of a raven from the Dragon Queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've been fed well these last two weeks. Pictures, interviews, trailers. It's all so exciting yet every time I see something, I get so nervous about Season Eight I think I'll hurl. So that's where I'm at.  
> I hope you enjoy! Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.  
> Have a nice day!  
> Song Recommendations: I Did Something Bad by Shoshanna Bean and Cynthia Erivo, All of the Love in the World by Lily Kershaw, hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have- but I have it by Lana Del Rey, and Howl by Florence + The Machine.

CHAPTER TWO

 

Deal with me  
Steal with me  
Just stay for a moment and heal with me  
Stray with me  
Play with me  
Oh how I wish you would stay with me.

-'All of the Love in the World' by Lily Kershaw.

 

Sansa had been Lady of Winterfell for nine months when the debt collector finally called.

It came in the form of a raven from the Dragon Queen.

Sansa had heard stories. Things hadn’t changed from her time in Kings Landing. Whispers by handmaiden’s, tales of the Dragon Queen’s beauty and ferocity, the charred destruction she left in her wake. The 70,000 strong army she had. Unsullied. Second Sons. Dothraki. Not to mention the three dragons to lay waste to everything she saw.

The stories of her ancestors burnt alive by Targaryen’s were fresh in her mind. She was no longer a girl and did not believe all the stories any longer.

That did not mean she didn’t pay heed to them.

 

Sansa knew Jon worried about the army of the dead. She had not seen what he had, but she knew him. She had heard his stories. And she knew he didn’t have the capability to lie. They sat up until the morning was nearly rising, scouring over the books in Winterfell, looking for any other way to defeat the army of the dead other than fire and dragonglass. Trying to figure out how they could fortify Winterfell against what would inevitably come. But Jon was Jon, and Sansa was Sansa. He may forget the threat posed by Cersei in the South. When she had heard about Cersei blowing up the Great Sept and killing Margaery and her father and brother in the process, her hands crumpling the scroll underneath it as she stood abruptly from the table, excusing herself from the watching eyes of Tormund, Davos, Brienne and Jon.

 

When Jon found her not minutes after, she was pacing her rooms like a caged animal, tearing at anything she could, throwing papers from her desk, throwing books against the wall and ripping at furs. He managed to grab her and hold her to him, and she screamed and sobbed into his shoulder until she was hoarse, mourning the loss of her friend. Her only friend.

Maybe Margaery had used her like a pawn, like she had used everyone else. But she had been kind and had saved her from the fate of marrying Joffrey. She had been a spark of light in the darkness of her time in Kings Landing, and now her light was snuffed out forever.

Sansa could not forget the looming threat of the figure who sat on the Iron Throne.

The raven from Daenerys signaled that the fraught, fragile and temporary peace that she and Jon had earned in the Battle of the Bastards was over.

 

X.X.X

 

Jon stood in the Great Hall of Winterfell, telling them of Samwell Tarly’s discovery of the mountain of dragonglass at Dragonstone. He told them of Tyrion’s message. Sansa sat calmly, her twitching hand betraying her anxiety as she tried to read him. He wouldn’t speak to her any more of the message from Tyrion, not until they were all in the Great Hall. Sansa knew that Jon was desperate for a way to defeat the Night King. But surely his desperation would not turn into a death wish.

“Lord Tyrion has invited me to Dragonstone to meet with Daenerys,” Jon declared to them, and Sansa held her breath as he turned to her, the room fading away. The bond between them tightened painfully with his grimly determined expression as he spoke to her, “and I’m going to accept.”

The uproar in the room passed between them unnoticed as Sansa drew in a sharp breath.

 

_‘Where will we go,’_ he had said.

_This is the price you have to pay. You have to lose him._

Jon spoke convincingly to the Lords, about the Dragon Queen’s power, the dragonglass under her feet, and the allure of allies in their fight against the Night King. Brienne’s pale face watched Sansa, aghast, and her eyes flicked between her sworn sword and Jon, words and thoughts and feelings tearing their way up from her heart and soul to her throat, only to be shoved back down. She scrambled for her mask, to be the Lady of Winterfell as her thoughts swirled in her brain. Sansa tried to find the right words to say when all she wanted to say was

_Please don’t leave me._

Instead she settled on the one thing they had always shared- stories.

 

“Have you forgotten what happened to our Grandfather? The Mad King invited him to Kings Landing and roasted him alive.”

Jon could barely look her in the eyes. If he looked, he would see the pain in her eyes and then he could never leave. He had meant what he said in Castle Black. He wanted the two of them to be together, but he couldn’t let her die and turn into a walker. The bond that tied them together squeezed his heart until he was breathless, and all he could get out was, “I know that.”

“She has come back to reclaim the Seven Kingdoms. The North is one of those seven kingdoms. This isn’t an invitation, it’s a trap.” Memories of Kings Landing swirl in her mind. Despite her admission that Tyrion was not like the other Lannister’s, he was still one of them, cunning and whip smart, and now the Hand of the Queen. Her ex-husband had been kind. But he could not be trusted.

“It could be,” Jon conceded. “But I don’t believe Tyrion would do that. You know him,” he threw in her face, “he’s a good man.”

Tyrion was not a good man, Sansa could not help but think. Good men were trusting, honest. Jon was a good man, who wanted to see the best in people.

It was going to get him killed.

 

“I know it’s a risk,” he told her. _I know what I’m doing to us._ “But I have to take it.”

Sansa could not deny that they needed help. There would be no North if the Wall fell. But she couldn’t bear to let him go again. She stood, pushing up from her seat, blood pounding in her ears as her mind raced ahead.

“Then send an emissary,” she suggested. “Don’t go yourself.”

“Daenerys is a queen. Only a king can convince her to help us.” The remark was like a slap to the face to her. Jon, who did not want to be king. Jon, who didn’t ask for it. Jon, who wouldn’t have won the Battle of the Bastards if not for her and the Knights of the Vale. She had intervened then, a girl helping a bastard.

What could a lady do to protect a king from a queen?

“It has to be me.”

 

Sansa was blinded by her anger for a moment, but she had always known how to make her words hit home like an arrow to a chest.

“You’re abandoning your people. You’re abandoning your home,” she argued, her words striking him down like she had intended. _You’re abandoning me._

His face was soft, impossibly so. Her words had hurt him and yet he did not strike back, nor did he back down. “And I leave both in good hands,” he told her gently. He believed that wholeheartedly. Sansa had been raised to be a lady, then primed to be a queen consort, to be dutiful and soft and obedient. She was none of those things. She had been reared by wolves and lived among lions. She had survived and learnt from the most ruthless and calculating rulers of the Seven Kingdoms, yet she did not follow their example of making people fear her. Instead she nurtured and gained people’s trust and love. She was porcelain and steel, kind and cunning, observant and demanding.

She would never be subservient. And he loved her for it, even if it infuriated him so.

 

“Whose?” she scoffed back.

“Yours.”

The word affected her, and she swayed back, mouth open. Jon looked at her and he saw her, truly saw her. Not just as a girl. Not as a lady. But as a protector, as a ruler. So long ago now she had longed for power. Now that she is getting it, she can’t help but think

_Not like this._

“You’re my sister,” the word tasted like vinegar on Jon’s tongue, leaving him disgusted with himself. It is what is known. The right thing to say. But they had been through too much together for him to ever see her as he saw Arya. “You’re the only Stark in Winterfell. Until I return,” _and I will return,_ “The North is yours.”

As am I, he thought. My body may leave, but my heart stays with you.

 

Words failed her. He was going, he was leaving, he would be gone from her. She never wanted power this way, but here it was, handed to her. Her people and her home and the blood of the North were hers to care for, to look after, to nourish. Her eyes flicked to Littlefinger- a problem she would have to deal with. Now she was in a position of power, he would want her even more- and she caught Brienne’s small, proud smile. She could swear she almost saw her mother with her, beaming with pride.

She looked back to Jon, who was the result of her father and Robb and the knights and princes in her stories. He was every man who had ever truly cared about her, giving her his heart, the North, in the palm of her hands.

‘It’s yours,’ she swore she could almost hear. ‘Take care of it.’

With a nod of her head, she accepted. At least in front of the Lords.

 

X.X.X

 

“You undermined me in there,” Jon started as he tore into Sansa’s rooms with barely a knock, closing the door behind him. Sansa had left the Great Hall as soon as possible with barely a frosty glance in his direction. The Lords had still been unsettled at the prospect of the King in the North leaving and Jon had spent his time reassuring them. “I just had to spend half an hour convincing the Lords of the urgency of preparing for the fight against the dead. You knew they were already unsure of that threat and you undermining me gives them more reason for doubt,” Jon spoke angrily as he turned to her, but his words died in his throat when he sees her standing in the middle of her room.

“What are you doing?” his voice was rough, surprised. Sansa did not break his gaze as she took off her cloak, unclipped her chain. She unstrapped her belt like a warrior taking off her armour. Her fingers moved deftly over the side lace on her dress.

 

“Sansa.” She wasn’t sure what was in his voice- alarm or pleading.

“You want to go to the Dragon Queen,” she stated, ignoring his pleading tone. “Leave the North. Leave me.”

“I don’t want to,” he said harshly, “I have to.”

Sansa’s eyes were as cold as the Wall itself as she regarded him. “It’s your duty, I suppose?”

“Aye,” Jon said gruffly, trying to avert his gaze as her dressing loosened and started slipping, baring uncharted territory to him. Sansa turned her back to him, shaking hands pushing her dress off her body until she stood in a light undergarment, drawing her hair to the side. His sharp intake of breath told her when he saw what she was showing him.

 

“These are my duties to the North,” Sansa told him coolly, brushing her hands over her skin. Jon’s fingers ghosted over the raised scars. Her body was a map, he realised. Scars of different shapes, sizes and weapons littered her body, everything from tiny white marks to long slices, to bite marks and crosses slashed through her flesh, to deeper, thicker scars, some crudely stitched at odd angles. With a pang he realised these were the ones she had to stitch herself.

“For Father supposedly plotting against the Baratheon’s. For every victory Robb had against the Lannister’s. For coming back to the North.” Sansa could find her voice freezing, getting stuck in her throat. “The price of coming home.”

Jon’s voice was low as he said, “Ramsey.” It was a statement, not a question. Sansa barked out a laugh that cut like a knife.

“Yes. He did most of what you see and more. The Bolton sigil was a flayed man. You figure it out,” she replied bitterly.

 

“It’s why you send the maids away,” Jon realised. For as long as they had been at Winterfell, Sansa had refused the help of handmaidens in dressing. She had made herself a new, severe looking dress that he had thought almost looked like armour. This whole time it was she hadn’t wanted anyone to see what had been done to her. His anger was so palpable he could taste it. The vast expanses of her pale skin were now marred by scars, some old and pale, most still red, pink and angry. Sansa gave him a short nod, turning back to face him.

“Just because I have not fought, Jon, does not mean I did not lose.”

Jon said nothing, and the foot of space between them felt like miles.

 

“This was for the North. All of this was for our home,” her words cut him down, and he flinched. “You’re the King in the North. The Dragon Queen wants you to bend the knee.”

“I never asked to be king,” Jon bit back, his eyes dark on hers.

“And yet you are. You’re going to bend the knee to a woman who would spill the blood of her enemies and her people before she spilt her own.”

“I nearly died for the North, Sansa,” Jon gritted out, forcing his gaze to keep on hers, “I intend to keep it.”

Sansa’s eyes glowed in the darkening room. “Both you and I know there are fates worse than death.”

 

Jon stepped back from her, and Sansa thought she’d lost him. She’d stepped too far, crossed a boundary that shouldn’t have been broken. Instead, Jon took off her own cloak. Unhooked his vest and shrugged off his padded tunic.

 Sansa’s breath caught in her throat. His skin was impossibly pale, like he’d fallen through ice. It made the red, raw, slashing scars that puckered on his chest and back stand out even more. She couldn’t help but run a hand lightly over the scar on his chest. On his heart, she realised with a shock. His dark eyes met hers, something flitting through them.

“I was killed because I believe the war between the living and the dead is bigger than any fight between men.” His voice was surprisingly soft considering what he was talking about, Sansa thought as she circled him closely, her eyes unable to tear away from his wounds, her hands ghosting his cuts. Anger flared hot and white in her as she took in his back, her quick mind finally catching up with what he had confessed to her in Castle Black.

_‘They stabbed me in the back. My own brothers.’_

Sansa had believed him when he said he had been killed and the Red Woman had brought him back. Jon was always honest, like Father, and she had seen the looks on the faces of Davos and Eddmund.

But she didn’t know he had meant it so literally.

 

“They stabbed you in the back,” she whispered, horrified.

Jon nodded, his body language still stiff and ready for a fight. “Aye.”

Sansa could feel a growl rising in her throat. Her pack. Hers. “I would kill them,” she said abruptly, so quietly he almost missed it. “I would have fed them to Ramsey’s dogs.”

Jon was surprised at the venom in her tone, but there is no lie in it. She’s loyal to those she loves. “So, you see why this is important,” he said, relieved. Sansa’s sharp gaze returned to him, and her heat left him, and she stepped away, her arms folded defensively against her chest.

 

“I understand the fight against the dead is important,” she admitted. “I also understand that the Dragon Queen came here for the Seven Kingdoms. The North is one of them. She could kill you before you even make your case and take the North for herself,” she pointed out.

Jon huffed, “she might not.” He understood that Sansa found it hard to trust. But they desperately needed allies, and fast. He had to take the chance.

“It’s too great a risk!” Sansa protested. Images of Jon’s head on a spike, his body burnt to a crisp flashed in her head. Threats were everywhere and Jon did not seem to see them, or care. “You would be leaving the North vulnerable. With Cersei on the throne- gods, Jon, if she found out-”

“Cersei won’t find out,” Jon growled in protest. Couldn’t she see? The threats posed by Cersei and Daenerys were nothing compared to the threat of the dead. If they didn’t defeat the dead, no other threat mattered. Didn’t she understand that?

Sansa was now yelling, fury and worry tearing at her as she paced the room. “You need to be smarter than this! The King in the North can’t die!”

 

“I’m doing this for you!” Jon exploded, surging towards her. “If we don’t get fire and dragonglass, there won’t be a North. You won’t have a home. All your flirtation with Littlefinger will have been for nothing.” Jon regretted the cruel and untrue words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but he didn’t see the slap coming. Not from Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell. But there she was before him, chest heaving, hair swirling like flames around her, teeth bared in anger.

That’s it, he thought. Show me the wolf you are.

“You cannot presume to know,” she gritted out slowly, measuredly, “what I do for us to keep the North.”

“You’re right,” he argued, his face stinging, “I can’t. Because you don’t talk to me. You never say what you mean!”

“I don’t want you to leave me,” she said slowly, every word tearing out of her throat like razorblades. “You said ‘where will _we_ go.’ You said you would protect me. I knew it was too good to be true. No one can protect anyone. So why did you have to try!” she cried. She was shoving him, heated and furious. He could see behind the cold exterior of her eyes that could crush any gaze-

Sansa was desperate.

 

“I meant it,” he said forcefully, catching her wrists gently to stop her pounding. “Everything I am doing is for you.”

“You think Arya or Bran would care about that if they ever came home to hear tales of how the King in the North was burnt alive?”

“I don’t mean for them,” he said rashly, the words tumbling from his lips, and her struggling stilled.

“You mean for House Stark.” Sansa’s intelligent eyes were watching, waiting. Waiting for him to make a mistake, say the wrong thing so she could swoop in like a vulture and tear him apart.

His sweet, torturous Sansa twisted him like no other. She always managed to be two steps ahead, have an answer for everything. Lies came so easy to her now that Jon could hardly tell what the truth was and what wasn’t. but when the fissures cracked and revealed the oblivion underneath, Jon knew that what was in her soul matched his.

“For you,” he repeated roughly.

House Stark bedamned. Father bedamned. They were all dead or stories, now. Sansa was here, thrumming under his fingertips, very much alive. “Safety. Protection. A home, your home. This home.”

 

“Our home.” Her words were so quiet, he thought he may have imagined them. Her lips brushing hesitantly over his, however, he didn’t. The bond between them sighed, _finally._ He could feel something in his chest cracking open, something that shouldn’t be there. A step over a cliff that if he took, he couldn’t come back. Could he drag her with him? Could he bear?

Sansa’s blue eyes pierced his and held them. “You hung a boy younger than Bran. I fed a man to his dogs. We are full of darkness, you and I.”

And there was the truth Sansa only admitted to herself in the littlest, darkest hours- she had never seen Jon as a brother, and never could. They danced on the edge of _something,_ something more than duty and family, home and loyalty. Something that was all of that and more. It was wrong, in their times. But the stories of brothers laid and wed with sisters in years past were fresh in Sansa’s mind, a dirty pleasure thrumming through her and made her feel less alone. But she didn’t know- did he feel it too? Was she alone in her madness?

His hands released her wrists, and they’re drawn together like a moth to a flame. He does not drag her over the cliff- she takes his hands and jumps. If she is mad for her thoughts, then madness had taken him too.

 

They’re wolves. It was all gnashing teeth, a give and take bordering on violence. Sansa bit so hard on his lip it drew blood, and she could feel a low growl in his throat as he gripped her harder. Yes, she thought. Feel something. Show me I’m not the only monster here.

He backed her against the wall, and she clung to him, bringing him closer and closer until there’s no space between them, the pieces of their body and soul fitting so perfectly together Sansa thinks that it couldn’t be wrong.

He couldn’t get enough of her, because he’s already going to be punished by the gods for thinking what he thought. He was supposed to see her like he saw Arya, but he couldn’t. His want to protect her was something more primal than pack love. Nothing bad was going to happen to her ever again. He wouldn’t let it. Father would haunt him if he didn’t look out for her, he had said so long ago. Even then they both knew that was a lie.

Some part of him knew that Father would be turning in his crypt. That they would be cursed by the gods.

 

“There are no gods,” Sansa murmured bitterly, her hands lightly tugging on his hair.

They were all cursed long ago. The moment they left Winterfell.

Their hands explored each other’s bodies, dips and valleys. His hand gently brushed her scarred side, and despite her earlier show, Sansa found herself tensing under him. This was intimate in a whole new way. Jon sensed her hesitancy and pulled back immediately, his eyes watching her face.

“A Lady isn’t supposed to have scars.” Her voice was like tempered steel, her eyes as hard as ice. But beneath them, something. A chink in Sansa’s armour.

She’s wasn’t like many people he knew. She was nothing like Ygritte, who always spoke her mind, who was rash, impulsive, free. Sansa’s face was always an impartial mask, her voice either frozen or-when with him- blazing like wildfire, every word from her pretty lips a well-calculated lie. Her words were her weapons, and she never missed.

 

But here she was, equally furious and melancholy, bitter and accepting. Jon could see her wrangle with her emotions, trying to find the flat nothingness that protected her. No, he thought. Show me something. Anything would be better than the wall you give me, unclimbable and impenetrable. His hand reached to cup her face, and despite her horrors, she did not flinch. Not from him.

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But a warrior does.”

“I’m not a fighter, Jon,” she replied tiredly.

“Really? Because you fight me every day,” he replied incredulously, and it earned him a small, genuine smile. “You’re more warrior than anyone I’ve ever met,” he declared fiercely. “You fought in every way you could to survive, and I’d cut down anyone who says otherwise.”

Sansa couldn’t help an indulgent eyeroll at his antics. “You’re beautiful, Sans. And you’re strong, and clever, and kind-”

 

“You think I’m beautiful?” Sansa asked him quietly. No one ever saw her, truly saw her. Yes, they saw her beauty. They saw the young, foolish girl. They saw her selfishness and stubbornness, her ignorance. They saw her as she was many years ago, a lifetime ago. The qualities he had noticed had been well cultivated and crafted over time through necessity. Men did not see a clever and strong woman and see her as beautiful. Men looked at clever and strong women and saw them as a threat.

Jon’s head ducked to give her a kiss on her forehead. “You know you are.”

Sansa smiled knowingly. Someone brave and gentle and strong. Jon.

“Flattery won’t work,” she told him pointedly, pulling him back to her. “You’re still making a terrible decision.”

Jon gave her an impish smile. “It was worth a try.”

 

Oh Jon, she thought. I will do everything in my power to make sure you keep your head.

She could feel his restraint and peppered kisses on his throat, her teeth nipping lightly as he let out a groan. “I trust you,” she murmured into his ear, her heart singing a siren song to him in her hands. _It’s yours. I’m yours. Take it._ “I will not break.”

Her head was jerked back to his, and the pieces of their souls and bodies connected, again and again and again.

Curses and gods and Father bedamned.

 

X.X.X

 

Jon left the North in the hands of Sansa. She was the only one he could imagine leaving it to. She was better at the game than he was. He couldn’t bear to say goodbye to her, she they didn’t. They connected and shared whispered stories, going over strategies and plans.

“If you wouldn’t mind- Ghost will stay with you?” Jon asked her and Sansa’s eyes examined his. She’s still angry, epically so, but she saw what he wasn’t saying- Ghost will protect you until I can. Part of me will always be with you- and nodded, her hand absently holding onto the direwolf.

“Look after her for me,” he whispered to Ghost, long after Sansa had gone to sleep.

 

Before he left, he went to the Crypt. To say hello, and goodbye. To pay respects. To beg for forgiveness for something that he knew should be wrong, but he just couldn’t feel it. He stopped briefly at his aunt Lyanna’s statue, an unexpected breeze holding him there before he moved on.  It was here Littlefinger approached. Jon had never liked him, with his beady eyes and snide remarks. He especially didn’t like the way he looked at Sansa. Not one bit. Littlefinger was talking, taunting him. Jon had gotten used to ignoring the man politely, they still needed the forces of the Vale after all- when he brought up Sansa.

“I love her, like I loved her mother.” Jon just saw red. A combination of anger and panic swirled in his mind and Littlefinger’s head hit the stone with a satisfying thump. He could have squeezed the life out of him. He wanted desperately to do anything to keep Littlefinger away from her. But as Sansa often reminded him- she knew how to handle Petyr Baelish.

“Touch my sister, and I’ll kill you myself.” The words felt wrong on his tongue, but they were the right ones to avoid suspicion.

But still, as Jon stormed out of the crypt, he couldn’t help but think:

He knows. He knows. He knows.

 

 

Sansa’s pack grew once more. First came Bran, no longer a boy but a man, and not quite Bran either. He looked like him, in a way, but the voice was so old in a way Sansa couldn’t fathom. But he was still her blood, her last brother, her kin. Winterfell was theirs once more, and with one less ghost and ‘what if’ haunting her, she no longer felt lonely for the first time since Jon left her. Her overwhelming gratefulness was cut short by words that would haunt her, reminding her of a time she would much rather forget.

“I’m sorry it had to happen here. You looked so beautiful in your wedding dress.”

Horror tore up her throat, threatening to spill out. Her eyes flickered as unwanted images surged to the forefront of her mind, before the memory of kind, gentle eyes appeared.

_‘I’ll protect you.’_

The weight of Ghost shifting beside her brought Sansa back to the godswood. Back to her brother. Ancient eyes stared back at her as Sansa tried to read him, but it was like staring at the oak of the tree.

 

She stood abruptly, swiftly. If Bran was this Three Eyed Raven, if he really saw everything that ever was and ever would be…

“I have to get back inside.”

He looked at her passively before turning away, lost in thought. “I think I’ll stay a bit longer.”

Sansa was already striding away with Ghost a shadow in the snow nearby, her mind thumping in time with her chest:

He knows. He knows. He knows.

 

Arya arrived not long after, considering the Stark separation. Sansa found her in the crypts, staring at the statue of their father. It didn’t look like him- everyone who knew Ned Stark’s face was gone.

“Not everyone.”

With Ghost beside them as they embraced, it was almost like he was with them.

Sitting under the weirwood tree in the godswood with Bran and Arya, talking about Littlefinger and attempted murders and lists, Sansa could not help but think-

_The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._

 

Sansa directed and she led. She organised food for the winter coming, and leather and insulation for the soldiers to fight in. she had taken Littlefinger’s advice- her mind was on all things at all times. The threat beyond the Wall, the South, to Cersei Lannister. Dragonstone, with the Dragon Queen and Jon. She placated the Lords when there was unrest.

She didn’t quite understand what had happened to Arya- these masks and faceless men, her sister, once always boiling with anger now tempered into cool rage. They didn’t get along much better than they did in childhood, nor did they understand each other, but both understood that family would always come first. The Stark’s would always come first. Their home would always come first. And they would do what they had to, with the help of Bran, to ensure that. They understood what needed to be happening, what certain people needed to see- two sisters at war.

 

Sansa led Littlefinger down a merry little path, with the help of Bran who revealed to them the truth about Petyr Baelish. Few things Sansa knew or suspected, most she did not. Jon Arryn. The valyrian steel dagger. Their Father. So, they planned, and they plotted, wolves playing with their food before they tore it to shreds. She sent Brienne to Kings Landing as an emissary when she was called. The opportunity to see Jon was outweighed by the prospect of leaving the North, and Sansa knew they both had duties they needed to fulfil.

And then the wolves of Winterfell hunted.

 

Lies and truths spilling from her poisoned lips. Arguments staged with Arya, just in sight of one of Littlefinger’s spies. She turned to him for advice, for comfort- Littlefinger wanted two things, and Sansa would let him think he can have her. That she trusted him.

Her trust in Littlefinger died a long time ago, but he signed his death sentence when advising her on a raven from Jon.

“Jon is young and unmarried. Daenerys is young and unmarried. An alliance makes sense.”

“You think he wants to marry her?” Sansa sounded sharp and incredulous to her own ears, and she can only hope he thinks she is worried about her place as Lady of Winterfell.  But Littlefinger is Littlefinger, always considering every possibility. As Sansa held his sharp, watchful gaze, she could only think:

He knows.

She would do what it took to make sure Jon kept his head, Sansa echoed to herself as Arya slit Petyr Baelish’s throat.

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warden of the North was coming home. Not the King of the North, but Jon Snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Back again. Please send your thoughts to my mother, who is watching Game of Thrones for the first time and has never heard anything about what happens in it. She's in for a fun ride. And she also guessed about Jon's parents seven episodes in. On 'just a feeling.'   
> I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!  
>  Song Recommendations: Ends of the Earth by Lord Huron, You Matter to Me from Waitress: The Musical, and Criminal by Fiona Apple.

CHAPTER THREE

 

All of this time I've been keeping my mind on the running away  
And for the first time, I think I'd consider the stay.

-'You Matter To Me' from Waitress: The Musical.

 

The Warden of the North was coming home. Not the King of the North, but Jon Snow. Sansa could still taste the metallic rage she felt when she received the raven.

_‘I have pledged our forces to Daenerys Targaryen.’_

He had given away something of theirs.

Sansa waited in the courtyard of Winterfell, the lone Stark.

‘We cannot let the Dragon Queen know of Jon’s weaknesses,’ she had whispered to her siblings in the dead of night. She needed to think nothing could touch him.

 

Though she would be the only Stark face the party would see, Arya was somewhere in the crowd, wearing a face Sansa did not know. Arya was a wolf, after all, and she could smell any possible betrayal from within the crowd of Northerners. Bran was inside by the fire of the family rooms, with Samwell Tarly relaying the message that Bran needed to speak to Jon, urgently. The former member of the Night’s Watch had arrived not long ago, with his love, Gilly, and baby Sam in tow. Sansa liked Sam. He was gentle and quiet, but she could see the steel formed under pressure. She could relate.

She wasn’t sure what kind of entrance Jon would make with the Dragon Queen. Jon would want something humble and discreet- this was not to be a conquering of the North. Sansa still had to wonder-

Then why did it feel like one?

 

Still, she was glad though her siblings weren’t at her side, she wasn’t alone. They were on her land, in her home. The people of Winterfell were behind her, she had made sure of that by killing the man who helped start the War of the Five Kings. The North would always remember. Brienne towered proudly behind her, Oathkeeper gleaming at her side, with Podrick not far off. As he had been since Jon had left, Ghost was at her side, a loyal and looming figure. It made her pang for Lady, her own direwolf now a long distant memory, one of the first casualties of their warring with the Lannister’s. She let Ghost roam- knowing now that a wolf was not a pet to be kept at your side- but he always came back to her side eventually. She hoped it was an omen.  

She had worried at the possibility that her planning had been too much, but she was grateful for the show of strength she had put on when they finally arrived. Sansa took stock as the retinue began to enter Winterfell. The Dragon Queen was kissed by ice, and smaller than Sansa had expected, dressed decadently in white furs. She was surrounded by people of her own- a foreign girl from Summer Seas with great poise, near her a man wearing what Sansa recognised from her books the uniform of the Unsullied. If he was with the queen, he must have been a leader. A man who bore a striking resemblance to Lyanna Mormont stood at the queen’s back, examining Winterfell and its inhabitants with soldier’s eyes. This must have been the Mormont Sam had healed at the Citadel, the one who went in search of the Dragon Queen. Sansa wasn’t foolish enough to think that would make him an ally.

To the queen’s right stood a sight that shocked Sansa, though she heard her ex-husband was Daenerys’ Hand. Tyrion’s step faltered slightly when he saw her, before a small smirk appeared on his scarred face and he inclined his head at her.

_‘Lady Stark, you may survive us yet.’_

Sansa gave the man a nod of acknowledgement in return.

 

She saved him for last. Her eyes drank him in, devouring him like she was starving. It had been so long since she had looked upon his face. Jon’s expression was serious as he took in Winterfell, the reaction of his people- before those stormy eyes turned to her.

Sansa was still angry, yes. But he was here, he was home. He had come back to her. As Sansa’s eyes flitted over the space between Jon and Daenerys- or lack thereof- she wondered- had he wholly?

He was striding towards her, leaving Daenerys in the dust. His strong arms were around her and Sansa closed her eyes and relaxed for the first time in months.

“Play along,” Jon murmured in her ear, and Sansa’s eyes lifted to stare down the Dragon Queen, who was impassively surveying Winterfell.

_What did you do, Jon?_

 

As if he heard her thought, he quickly disentangled himself from the red head and stepped away, his body turned towards Daenerys.

“Welcome to Winterfell, Your Grace,” Jon greeted, and Daenerys smiled prettily as she approached them, the Mormont not far behind.

Sansa couldn’t help herself from speaking up. “Jon, you may be King in the North-”

“Warden of the North,” Jon corrected, and Sansa could see the warning and exasperation in his eyes.

Sansa narrowed hers. “My apologies. You may be Warden of the North, but I am the Lady of Winterfell. It is not yours to give,” she reminded him sweetly, her voice dripping like honey and poison. Tyrion coughed from a distance, also familiar with her passive aggressive comments, ready to intervene.

Daenerys raised a pale eyebrow, an amused smirk on her face. The woman had not encountered a powerful woman before coming to Westeros. She was inexperienced in this side of the game, used to using force to get what she wanted. _Fire and Blood._ Jon’s eyes hid their plea well, but Sansa could still see it. She turned her full attention back to the Dragon Queen. Her cool blue eyes examined her dismissively, slowly looking her up and down before meeting Daenerys’ gaze. Her polite words were steely as Sansa straightened.

“Winterfell is yours, Your Grace.”

The lie lit a fire in Sansa’s belly.

Winterfell would never be hers.

And neither would Jon.

 

 X.X.X

 

 “What was that about?” Jon hissed at her as she strode through Winterfell, keeping an ear out for murmurs of dissent.

“I told the truth, Jon. You couldn’t give Winterfell, it was only right I did it,” she informed him stonily. The Dragon Queen and her people had been given a quick tour, and then shown to their rooms by Davos. Jon had gotten away by needing to find out the state of Winterfell’s affairs since he had been gone. Finally, they were alone. 

“You undermined me, and made it seem like you don’t agree with my decisions.”

“I don’t agree with your decisions,” Sansa retorted.

“Sansa, please. We need to present a united front,” Jon said wearily.

“The only one you seem united with now is her,” bit out Sansa. They had arrived at the destination Jon didn’t realise they were heading to. Sansa had sent Ghost off to Bran discreetly as the guests had been settled. For all intents and purposes, it just looked like the direwolf had chosen a place to rest- but he was guarding, and no one would get passed.

 

Jon smiled when he saw his companion. “Ghost. Did you do what I asked?”

In response, the white creature curled itself protectively around the red head, and Jon couldn’t help but love the sight. _Thank you, friend._ Jon reached to give him a pat of thanks when a low grumble erupted in Ghost’s throat. Jon drew back his hand, hurt and surprised.

“I think he might be angry with me,” he said carefully, and they both knew Ghost wasn’t the only wolf he spoke of.

Sansa’s watchful eyes examined the scene, her hand a calming influence on Ghost. Her eyes locked on Jon’s as she answered. “Maybe he’s not sure if you’re still a wolf. Maybe he thinks you’re a dragon now.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed at the insinuation. “I’m a wolf through and through,” he declared fiercely.

Sansa rapped pointedly on the door. “We’ll see.”

We’ll see, he thought as he followed her into the dark.

 

X.X.X

 

If Jon had been shocked to see Sansa, he was stunned to see Arya and Bran. His step had fumbled as Sansa pulled him into the room and Brienne shut the door behind them. Neither of his younger siblings were anything like he remembered, until the sword at Arya's hip, Needle, reminded him that they really were here. He surged forward and his sister met him, flinging herself into his arms.

"You didn't do much growing," was what Jon found himself saying.

"Shut up," Arya sighed back, but he knows she doesn't mean it. He squeezed her until he thought she might complain, but she only hugged him back just as hard.

Jon went over to Bran next, wrapping his arms around his brother. His only brother, he thought with a pang. Jon noticed Bran's lack of reciprocation but puts it down to Bran being so young when he'd left for The Wall.

"It's good to see you. You've gotten so big."

"Yes. I'm glad to see you too."

 

Jon stepped back and examined his family, the sight of the three Stark’s something he never thought he would see again, only in his dreams. In the room that used to be the family room, the pack was reunited, and he could almost hear a whisper of Robb’s booming laugh, Catelyn’s singing, and Father’s stories. The ghosts of Winterfell surrounded them- but for once it did not make him feel alone. It made him feel like everything was as it was meant to be.

_The pack survives._  

 

 "How long have you been home?" Jon asked, and Bran answered him.   
"I arrived a few days after you left. Arya a week after that."  
Jon was stung. "You've been back so long."

  
Sansa answered his unasked question calmly. Most things between her and Jon went unsaid, but she had gotten good at reading him like a familiar book. "I had no way to tell you."  
"Were they here when Brienne left for King's Landing?" he demanded suddenly, knowingly, because of course they were. Sansa didn't shirk under his gaze.   
"Yes."  
"I can't believe you didn't tell me that my own brother and sister had come home. Don't you think that's something I would have liked to know?" he addressed this to Brienne, who shifted uncomfortably. As she opened her mouth to speak Sansa's cool voice cut through the room, relieving her.

"I told Brienne not to tell you. Telling you would have been telling Daenerys, and we couldn't trust that she wouldn't use your weaknesses against you. She already knew about me, it made the most sense."

"And they weren't in the courtyard because?" Jon shot back. He may have been a bastard, but he gave the North to Daenerys. He remembered how the Starks had lined up to welcome Robert Baratheon to Winterfell when it was given to him. Daenerys was bound to get suspicious when Arya and Bran were suddenly there and had not greeted her. She insulted easily.

 

"We could not rely on the hope that her dragons hadn't burned you alive and she'd come to take Winterfell by force. Arya and Bran would have at least stood a chance." Bran didn’t correct her that he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Arya was fast and resilient; the Stark’s would have survived on through her.

  
Jon grimaced at the thought, at the idea of Sansa convincing her siblings to leave her, to leave their home so they could live. "We agreed that coming in peace was best."  
"We?" Sansa echoed, her eyes alight. "She doesn't have the best track record about not burning people alive. Does she?" her eyes were piercing, seeing right through him. Through the glances from Daenerys and Jon’s odd formality, and she knew. Of course, she knew.

"You've given the North to an invader, Jon,” Arya said begrudgingly, before jerking her head at Sansa. “Lady Stark here says you went through a lot to get them to your side. So, I was in the crowd, gauging reactions," she explained.   
Jon's brow furrowed. "The people wouldn't openly object in front of a Stark."  
Arya smirked at her brother, eyes glowing with a secret she couldn’t wait to let him in on. "They didn't."

 

"The people are... unsettled. To say the least," Brienne said diplomatically, "but I think it's understood we can't face the threat of the dead alone."

Jon nodded appreciatively, grateful for the update. "Good. Tormund is back at the Wall with Edd. They'll warn us the moment the white walkers strike."

"They're not pleased you bent the knee," Arya told him evenly. Jon hadn’t been there when the whispers started through Winterfell, discontentment and aggravation settling like a cloak over its people. The whispers of ‘The Queen in the North’ and that they had chosen the wrong of Ned Stark’s children. That it was Sansa that took back Winterfell, Sansa who won the Battle of the Bastards. Unease had weighed on Arya’s shoulders at the sight of her sister not denying the Lords, sitting where their Father once had. Arya’s memories of her sister were of a foolish and power-hungry girl, one who idolised Cersei Lannister, one who didn’t like Jon.

Instead of taking the Northern crown, Sansa had killed the man who would have put her in the position of power. She ordered the execution of the man who started the War of the Five Kings, and the Northerners fell behind her, ready to do whatever she chose.

And Sansa had chosen Jon. The ambitious girl Arya had known had turned down the crown, and chose Jon, again and again. Arya realised she did not know her sister, not now, not really. And seeing the tension between Sansa and Jon, the way she had reacted to Jon and Daenerys, the way Jon had looked at her like the world was finally righted when he saw her again, Arya felt like she didn’t know anything at all.   
Jon's eyes settled on Sansa, who stared back impassively. "It seems they're not the only one."

 

"The North wanted you, Jon. Not Cersei. Not Daenerys. You," Arya urged. Take what was Robb’s, what is yours, what is ours. Take what we fought to give you.    
"I'm back now," Jon said gruffly. “If they wanted me, they’ll realise I’ve done this for a reason.”   
"When you bent the knee, you disrespected your people. People who fought and died for House Stark," Sansa said at last. The eyes on the North were on them, and she didn’t want to let them down. "I asked you not to go, and you did not heed my council. Now the North is lost."  
"The North would be lost without that army and those dragons. There would be no North, Sansa," Jon argued passionately. She didn’t know what he had done to get Daenerys here, to make her an ally.  

  
"It's lost to the Dragon Queen. If that's much better," Sansa's voice held carefully concealed distain, and Jon had almost forgotten how much she could see. She knew what he had to do, how he was prisoner on Dragonstone. She knew the price of the alliance, and she was furious with it.  
"Daenerys has come to help save the North," Jon said carefully, cautious of the others in the room, who didn’t know and wouldn’t understand the price both Jon and Sansa had paid. 

 

  
Sansa stared at him from her seat. For once, she couldn’t read him. He was drawing up a battle plan she wasn’t privy to, and the closed door in her face stung. "Say she does save the North," Sansa suggested. "We defeat the Night King. The North remains. What do you think Daenerys will do then? Give it back to us?" she asked dryly, but before he could speak, she was throwing her words at him like daggers. "Our armies would be crushed by hers to squash any possible rebellion, and we would all be burnt alive or shipped off to people who can control us."  
Jon tried not to flinch at the image of the people he loved, lost to him. His mind travelled to Daenerys, her ways and her words.

_‘I hope I deserve it.’_

"She wants the people to like her," he said finally, his way of saying, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t.

 

  
"She killed my family," a quiet voice cut through the tension in the room, and the arguing disappeared like smoke. In the middle of the arguing, they hadn't noticed Brienne let Sam into the room, his invitation forgotten.   
Sam cleared his throat and stepped further inside the room, closing the door behind him.   
"My Father wasn’t a good man. He was prejudiced and cruel. But Dickon- Dickon was good. Kind. Loyal. He didn't deserve to die for my father's mistakes. She didn't even give him a chance. He hadn't even seen battle before the raid of High Garden," Sam’s voice faltered, pain flashing in his eyes. He was a man who hadn’t been shown much kindness in his younger years, so the little that was shown from his brother had been precious.

  
Jon's mouth was dry. He hadn't seen his friend in so long. So, arriving with the woman who executed his family--Jon had a horrible taste in his mouth." Sam-"  
"They held hands as they died," Sam said faintly, and Brienne hung her head.   
"I'm so sorry, Sam. How do you know?" Jon asked suddenly, realising Sam hadn't talked with Tyrion or Daenerys, and he didn't think they would be callous enough to share that information.   
"I see many things," Bran said ominously in response, and that was all that was said. Jon frowned and Sansa stood before it could get off topic. There was time to discuss Bran’s new occupation later. 

 

  
"That it what she did to some who took orders against an ally. What would she do to people she deemed an imminent threat to her rule?"

Sansa fiddled idly with an old letter from Littlefinger. The one reminder she had kept from him.

  _‘Every possible series of events is happening, all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before.’_

"She could kill us, but you said she wants to be loved. The North would never accept her if she murdered the Starks, but she can't have Stark’s running around that could usurp her throne. No, she needs us close." She glanced over at the table, the map of Westeros atop it.

 

"Bran she might not see as a threat. He doesn't want the Throne, nor could he take it with his other responsibilities. He would be too value to kill so he would be placed on her council with his own guards of her choosing who could kill him should he take leave of his senses,” she grimaced apologetically at her brother, who tilted his head at her reasonably accurate idea.

“Arya would be a wild card. Her skill necessary to keep the people in line and quash any possible threats before they arise. If she does not have spies now, she will want them when she takes Kings Landing. Arya will be with her, far from here and no way of rousing support from the North.” Arya scowled in response. Sansa faltered slightly, her mind mulling over her next words before forcing them out into the room, directing them at Jon.

“You she already has control of. You've bent the knee and vacated your position as King of the North. Your loyalty would be insured by knowing no harm would come to us, as long as we all behave accordingly. A marriage union would go a long way to insuring that,” Sansa spoke past the lump in her throat at the thought of him marrying Daenerys. She knew he would do it, if it ensured their safety. Jon looked away, and she couldn’t help but think.

_You said, ‘where will we go.’ You said you’d protect me. What if you can’t do both?_

 

“As for me the plan would need the most finesse. I didn't bend the knee to her and as the oldest named Stark she could not take the chance the North would rally behind me, nor could she kill me as the North would turn on her. No, she needs the face of House Stark to be made loyal to her. And that any potential children I may have would not rise in rebellion but would instead be pledged to House Targaryen. And what easier way to do that than to re-marry me to the Hand of the Queen, Tyrion Lannister. Is that about right?" Sansa finished finally, a sickly dread overtaking her.

_I will never marry someone who loves me._

“Well that was thorough,” Arya commented dryly. “Nice that we’re not likely to be burnt alive though.”

 

Sansa fell silent, expecting an answer, waiting for him to tell her she’s wrong.  
Jon's face was ashen and grim. Daenerys had indeed mentioned the idea of marriages to unify the Seven Kingdoms. He had avoided the topic, bringing the concentration back to the army of the dead. But Daenerys was a queen who planned to conquer, and people would have to bend or break.   
" More or less," he admitted finally.   
Though she was right, Sansa did not look triumphant. She did not look like she felt anything at all.

 

" Are you sure there's no other way?" Arya asked her brother finally. She had always looked up to him and loved him most. If he said there was no other way, she would believe him.

Jon's mouth was in a grim line. "What I saw beyond the Wall is a glimpse of the Night King's army. We need all the help we can get. He already killed one of her dragons, so she's committed to this fight. But she won't unless she has commitment from us. She wants a union as a way of ensuring Northern support after this is over. A martial alliance between House Targaryen and House Stark."

Sansa tried to swallow her bitterness.

It was either protect her or be with her. He could not do both.

 

Sam looked nervously at Bran and turned the boy’s wheelchair to face the room for the first time." It won't be an alliance between two houses. It would further one house." Bran spoke with such assurance it stopped everyone in their tracks, confusion marring all their features.  
Jon was baffled. " I don't understand."  
Bran's watchful eyes stared into Jon's." All your life you wondered who you were and where you came from. You felt disjointed from this family. You craved the Stark name." Jon shifted under his scrutiny, like the younger man had seen inside his head. He felt stripped bare in front of them all- things they were bound to know he felt, said out loud for the first time.

  
"He is a Stark," Arya insisted.

"Your name would never be Stark. You are a Stark in everything but name, but not the way you think, " Bran continued, and Sansa shot him a look at his bluntness as Jon visibly flinched.   
"Bran," Sansa said sharply, but Bran carried on.   
"He needs to know, Sansa. Everyone needs to know. You were protected so long by your mother's love and our Father's promise. But the time has come."

 

"Do you know who my mother is?" Jon demanded, heart pounding. His lifelong unanswered question.   
"You're a Stark in everything but name," Bran repeated.   
Arya groaned. She had come to realise the Three Eyed Raven could be extremely evasive. "Bran, say what you mean!"   
Jon was pacing the room now, his thoughts swirling. A Stark in all but name. So, a bastard then. But not the way he thinks.   
"My mother," Jon pleaded desperately. Let the question finally be answered.   
Bran looked levelly at Jon. "It was right in front of us this whole time, Jon. All we had to do was look down. You can brush past her no longer."  
Jon staggered back like he's been hit. His knees gave way as he sinks to the ground, the weight of what Bran was saying finally hitting him.

_An unexpected breeze holding him there before he moved on._

_‘Brush past her no longer.’_

 

"By the gods," Sansa said softly, staring at him like she was seeing him for the first time.   
_Whoever Jon's mother was, her father must have loved her very much. For nothing her mother said would send him away._    
He was not her brother at all. 

  
"Lyanna," Jon choked out, the weight of the guilt killing him, and Bran nodded.   
Arya's eyes widened fractionally in realisation. "A Stark in all but name."  
"You are Aunt Lyanna's son," Bran said gently.

"Why wouldn't Father tell me?" Jon asked, anguished. His eyes searched them all, desperate for answers that none of them have.   
"Lyanna made him promise to protect you. When Robert died, Father was in Kings Landing and you at The Wall. He never got the chance," If Sansa didn't know Bran now, she would almost have thought he sounded regretful, like he knew the choice their father faced. But of course, he did. The Three Eyed Raven sees all.

 

Jon's face was in his hands, clawing at his head. She had been here all these years, and he brushed past her grave not knowing she was the reason he was alive, that her body had carried him, that it was her who gave him life, who died for him.   
"So, what, I'm a Southern bastard then? Is that what you're telling me?" he asked harshly, his words venomous and self-loathing. His home wasn't even his home. He was a liar and a fraud.

"Jon," Arya said sharply, and with a start he realised she's right beside him, pulling his arms from his face and clasping his forearm tightly, his pulse under her calloused fingertips. "Feel that. That's Stark blood. Our blood. It runs through all our veins, no matter what else it's mixed with. You're one of us and you always will be. You’re Father’s son, through and through. The pack survives, Jon," she urged, and as if to make a point Ghost nudged in beside him.

Jon nodded. In the depth of his confusion he understood what she was saying, his blood calling to the Stark's as it always did. But they seemed impossibly father away, detached from him already.

 

"The pack survives."   
Jon looked up to the sound of that voice. The voice who yelled at him and praised him, who joked with him and cut him to his core, who shared her innermost, darkest moments with him and accepts his without a moment’s hesitation. Whose voice could do what many couldn't- breathe back life into someone. Who could provide hope when it seemed lost, home when there was none, and bring a burning ember of a person back into a flame. She had done it in Castle Black and here she was, kneeling before him, not caring if her dress was getting dirty, doing it again.

Cool hands took his face between them, clear and steady eyes bringing him back to her. She anchored him against the darkness of his mind, reaching in and grabbing him, refusing to let go. Coaxing him back from the abyss, bringing him back to them, their family. His hand came over hers, clasping it. Sansa planted a soft, protective kiss on his forehead and spoke softly but surely.  
"You have always been a wolf, Jon, and you'll be a wolf until the day you die. It doesn't matter what name you carry."

 

"You don't know what name he carries yet," Sam said nervously, sensing this was as good a chance as any. "You're not a bastard, Jon. You're the most legitimate person in the Seven Kingdoms. The premise of Robert's Rebellion-it was all wrong. Lyanna wasn't kidnapped by Rhaegar Targaryen. They loved each other."  
"What are you saying, Sam?" Arya asked in an oddly calm tone, but her grip on Jon' s forearm tightens. Please don't take him again. She had just gotten her family back. They were all different, scarred and weathered, but they were her pack.

 

"Rhaegar had his marriage to Elia Martell annulled. He married Lyanna Stark and they had a son... Aegon Targaryen. You," Sam finished.

Jon felt calm. Something had clicked into place in his head. All his life he had wanted to know where he came from, who he was. And ever since he left Winterfell he had been fighting. Of course, he had. Fighting was in his blood. He had been foolish to hope that fighting would ever stop.

_‘Maybe he’s not sure if you’re still a wolf. Maybe he thinks you’re a dragon now.’_

 

Sansa's words from not an hour previous rang in his head, and he wondered if she knew. Judging by how pale her face was, how surprise tinged her lovely features he knew she'd been thinking over her own words. He saw the plea in her eyes- _I didn't know_.

Arya was staring at him with wide eyes, visions of the heroes in the stories she loved- Aegon and Visenya and Rhaenys and their dragons. "You're a Targaryen. You're _the_ Targaryen."  
"He’s the Heir to the Iron Throne." Bran’s words confirmed what they had quickly come to the conclusion of. Shocked silence overtook the room. Sansa searched Jon's eyes quickly, but he's locked in his head, hiding in the crevasses he won't even let her in.   
_I'll protect you._

 

Sansa stood, slowly, deliberately. She turned a freezing and serious gaze on everyone in the room, rooting them to the stop, and said in a voice that left no room for argument,   
"This information does not leave this room." She turned to Bran and Sam. "Have you told anyone else?"   
Sam shook his head vigorously and Bran tilted his to the side at his sister. His proud, dignified sister who had a man executed for love of a man who went to war for her. She tried to hide how she felt, her worry for his safety, her loneliness when he was gone, how she was now one half of a whole, when Jon had left, he had taken her heart with him, and his left with her in return. She was better at hiding it than Jon, who looked at her like he was a drowning man and she was the shore. The promises they had made to themselves and each other echoed around Bran’s head as well as theirs.

 

  
"You can't protect him from this."  
Arya gave him a quizzical look, eying Jon and Sansa’s clasped hands, and her sister straightened. Sansa kept a hold of his hand and stood in front of him, blocking his broken form from view. He wouldn’t want them to see him like this, not when he came around.

  
"No. Jon is the rightful heir. But the Iron Throne is not something we have time to trouble ourselves with this second.” Sansa’s brain scrambled with the new information, and she found it dizzying. Despite Littlefinger’s advice- she had never expected this. This could change everything. “We need to be smart and figure out what our move will be. You have seen all, Bran," she stepped towards her brother, her gaze challenging, "what do you suppose Daenerys would do when she finds out that she is not the rightful heir?" 

Oh gods.

  
His silence was her answer, and she looked once again at everyone in the room, who suddenly weren’t able to meet her gaze but were instead staring in disbelief at Jon.   
"We don't tell anyone about this until we understand this situation better. It does not leave this room. It is not talked about. It isn't even thought about. Is that understood?"

She knew she couldn't protect him. But she at least had to try. 

 

X.X.X

 

“I thought I might find you here.”

Jon looked up, his eyes adjusting in the darkness at the tall, willowy figure heading towards him.

Had she really? Jon hadn’t even known where he was going until he was there. The godswood was silent and peaceful in the early morning hours, Winterfell quiet until others would rise, and he would have to face them as well as the day.

“How did you know?” he asked, his voice croaking into being as his self-imposed silence finally lifted. After Sansa had sworn the group to secrecy Jon had stayed, hunched in the chair by the fire, stunned into silence. Sansa hadn’t spoken, instead she managed to pull him out of his cloak and settled primly opposite him with her needle and thread. Her fingers moved deftly and surely, mending a tear Jon hadn’t even realised was there. She hadn’t spoken, her mind far away on more important matters than the mending of a cloak. He had left after a few hours, but they both knew he would not be sleeping.

The crunching of Sansa’s boots stopped, and she brushed snow off a stone and sat down on it.

 

“When I was in Kings Landing, I used to go to the godswood. I didn’t pray anymore, even then. It was the only place I could go where people wouldn’t talk to me.” A wolf among lions, Jon thought. He nodded like this made sense to him, because it did, in a way. It might have been why he would have come here, had it not been the dead of night. Sansa hesitated with something, before deciding that she could let him be silent no longer.

“It made me feel close to Father.”

 

Jon sighed, his hand gripping the rock he sat on so hard he could feel gravel bite into his fingers. Of course, Sansa saw him better than he saw himself. “Sansa, please.”

“Let me say this, then I will say nothing more on the matter,” Sansa swore, her eyes gentle and solemn in the darkness. When Jon didn’t say anything, she carried on. “Father took you in because you were Lyanna’s son. But he raised you as he did because you were his. He loved you terribly, Jon, it must have been such a secret to keep from you. He raised you just as he did Robb- to be brave, to be strong, to be kind. He raised you to be good. He raised you to be a Stark, to be like him. He may not be your father, but you will always be his son, no matter what name you bear.”

 

Her eyes were so impassioned, so convinced, that Jon desperately wanted to believe her.

“How? How do you accept that the few things you knew about yourself weren’t true?” Jon had always asked who his mother was. It hadn’t occurred to him that his whole parentage had been a lie. So many questions he wanted answered- and the people he wanted to ask were dead and gone.

“Time will prove a healer. Bran will be able to tell you about them, when you feel ready. But it won’t tell you anything about yourself. You’re the same person you were yesterday, the same person you always were.”

 

Jon managed a wry smile. “That title seems to be ever changing.” Bastard. Brother of the Night’s Watch. Crow. Lord Commander. King in the North. Warden of the North. Aegon Targaryen. Heir to the Iron Throne.

Sansa forced a smile. “Still not as many as Daenerys.” The mention of the Mother of Dragon’s sent both into silence. The cold winter blew, but Sansa did not flinch, looking as at home here as she did inside Winterfell. She was the wolf who guarded Winterfell, he thought with pride. He could only hope she could forgive him.

“I lay with her.”

There it was, the ugly truth out in the open. Sansa’s eyes flashed before she nodded.

“I know. I could tell from the way she looked at you.” Sansa paused, jealousy searing hot and angry through her. “Do you wish to marry her?”

“We need her for the fight against the dead.” Sansa made an irritated noise.

 

“That isn’t an answer.”

“I can’t give you one,” replied Jon. He didn’t want to. Of course, he didn’t. But if they were to survive, he needed to keep her on side. “It’s complicated.”

Sansa eyed him coolly. “It always is.”

“I’m doing this for us to keep the North, Sansa,” Jon urged shortly.

Sansa’s eyes were far away when she answered. “We’ve done a great many things for the North.” Jon frowned at her tone. “And we’re going to keep doing them, until it’s done.”

 

_‘You don’t presume to know what I do for us to keep the North.’_

“Has Littlefinger been bothering you?”

“Littlefinger is dead.” Sansa said it so calmly Jon almost thought he misheard her. She must have seen surprise on his face, because she explained. “He got Aunt Lysa to kill Jon Arryn and tell Mother it was the Lannister’s. He made her think it was Tyrion who tried to kill Bran. He betrayed Father by helping Cersei and Joffrey accuse him of treason. He tried to get me to kill Arya and seize control of the North. So, we slit his throat.” Her eyes said what her lips did not.

“He knew,” Jon said, and it was a statement, not a question. That last day in the Crypt, the way he always watched Sansa, always watched them- how could he not?

“I would suspect so. There wasn’t much he didn’t know.” Neither of them said what it was Baelish knew, for they didn’t really know themselves. It had no name, it wasn’t spoken of, just a thing that surrounded them, a bond and connection they shared unlike the one shared with the siblings. There was so much he wanted to tell her, he wanted to say, but it wasn’t the time. Soon, he promised himself. Soon.

 

“The Lords aren’t happy with you,” Sansa said simply, rising to her feet. “But we caught the man who started The War of the Five Kings. They’re behind us.”

“They’re behind you,” Jon reminded her, rising also. He knew this to be true, he had seen it in the eyes of the people when he had arrived back at Winterfell, the way they had stood behind Sansa, ready to act on her command. He had known leaving the North in her care was the right thing to do, that she was born for it. She was Ned Stark’s eldest child, she had fought and bled for the North. He was glad that the people understood that.

“We’re with you, whatever name you choose. The North will follow.”

 

“Are you?” he asked, despite it all. Despite the Dragon Queen waiting for him, and the new title he bore, and the fact she was raised his sister and was his cousin. “With me?”

Sansa smiled at him, for she understood what sacrifice was, what they would both do for their people, for their family, for each other. “Always.”

As she turned away, dignified and lonely looking against the moon, Jon couldn’t help but confess something. “You once told me I had to be smarter than Father. Smarter than Robb.”

 

Sansa paused and turned back to him, his hand on her arm. Her eyes were curious, examining his. Understanding dawned in her eyes. Jon was finally playing the game.

“Should I be worried?” she asked carefully. Jon’s eyes were dark on hers.

“No more than usual.”

She understood. Everybody is your enemy, everybody is your friend. Keep preparing for every possibility. Jon may finally be playing, but he hasn’t been playing for as long as she has. “If I gave you council, would you take it this time?”

Jon gave her a wry smile. “I promised to protect you, didn’t I?”

Sansa’s cool, steady hand squeezed his. “We protect each other.” 

 


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Jon was prepared for war.  
> Not just between the living and the dead, or even the war for the Iron Throne. He was prepared for the war that was bound to break out here, in the Great Hall, between the Red Wolf and the Dragon Queen.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! We're now firmly in- as one reader put it- 'Season 8 speculation land.' Not that this is necessarily what I think will happen, but just scenes I thought would be fun and interesting to write! Now is the time to remind everyone that this story does have dark Dany, and isn't the most Dany friendly. I do love her character and it's not a case of 'oh you only like Sansa not Daenerys'- Because I like both! But everyone is darker in this story, and scenes and events from the show can be seen in different ways, and in this particular story we get dark Dany. So if that isn't for you, no worries! I'm not attacking any characters, I just think certain characters wouldn't like her very much.  
> Anyways! Onwards. I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think! Familiar faces start to pop up.
> 
> Song Recommendations: Blood On My Name by The Brothers Bright, Wild Woman by Sleep Machine and Ashes by Madi Diaz.

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Running with the wolves under the moon,

I'm singing over bones.

Like a fire on the river, I'm bringing hell

Where it never goes. 

-'Wild Woman' by Sleep Machine.

 

Over the next days, more of Daenerys’ people joined Winterfell. The castle was soon full of the highest of Daenerys’ ranks, and Sansa couldn’t help but be overwhelmed at the amount of people. _So many mouths to feed._ She walked through the grounds of Winterfell with Maester Wolkan, getting updates on the stockpiles of granary they were building when a familiar, low voice she hadn’t heard in a very long time spoke.

“Hello, Little Bird.”

Sansa turned, shocked, to see The Hound standing before her. It was odd, seeing him in Winterfell, in Northern clothes and unmarked armour, her life in the South and the North clashing together.

“Sandor. I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you were in Kings Landing,” he retorted gruffly, and it almost looked like he was going to smile. “Seems you didn’t need my help getting North after all.”

Sansa regarded him. He had been a torment, a reminder of the cruelty she suffered in Kings Landing, but he had saved her many times, and to this day she didn’t know why. She doubted he did either.

_‘You won’t hurt me.’_

 “No,” she answered finally, a rueful smile playing on her lips. “I didn’t.”

 

“Seven hells.” Sansa didn’t know where Arya had appeared from, as she tended to do these days. But there she was, suddenly at her side, looking even more tiny compared to The Hound. Sansa had almost forgotten Arya knew him better than she did- when the sisters had gotten to talking about Arya’s list, it hadn’t escaped Sansa’s notice that Arya had removed Sandor Clegane from it, instead leaving him for dead after a battle with Brienne.

Sandor’s face fell into a scowl as he saw the younger Stark sister. “Hello, little cunt.”

Sansa was shocked not at his words- you spend enough time in the presence of The Hound you get used to it. What shocked her was despite the scowl and his harsh words, his eyes were full of a kind of fondness and pleasure. A glance at her sister told Sansa she was wearing a similar scowl.

 

“I see you’re fighting for something good this time. Still trying to sell little girls for ransom?” Arya asked archly.

Sandor shrugged “I found religion.”

“And I’m Cersei Lannister’s Queensguard. I’m sorry, I thought we were saying things that weren’t true.” Arya retorted. Sandor bared his teeth at her, his disfigured face stretching.

“Laugh all you want. But I’ve seen what’s beyond the Wall. Your brother needs all the help he can get in this war.”

Glancing around and sharing a look with Arya, who regarded her with cold, knowing eyes, Sansa turned back to The Hound. “Actually, I have something else I think you’ll find better suited.”

 

X.X.X

 

Sansa knew more people than Jon could have imagined. People she had been kind to, who had shown her kindness in return. Jon had been surprised to see her speaking so easily with The Hound. She had overseen the North to perfection whilst he was gone, concentrating on the things he hadn’t. He had been focused on the fight to the north, and Sansa had been focused on getting their people through the winter. She talked with Greyworm about numbers in his army, and worried over how those from across the sea would fare in the Winter. It left Jon about to worry more about battle plans and formations, who to send where. They had separate strengths- Sansa in people, Jon in battle- but together, Jon could only hope they would get through this.

Jon joined her on the battlements of Winterfell as she left the rookery, slipping out the door and giving him a nod.

“He’s on his way to Essos.”  Sansa didn’t explain who she meant- she didn’t need to. The less that was said, the better, especially now they were surrounded by strangers.

Jon didn’t question this, it had only been a matter of time before the move was made. It was only a question of whether it would pay off. The two of them stopped on the battlements at the sound of a scuffle in the courtyard.

 

“Who is that Arya is pushing?” Sansa asked curiously, watching as whoever it was knelt to Arya and mockingly said,

“M’lady.”

Arya, who Sansa knew by her coiled form was surprised, reached and shoved the man to the ground. Sansa tensed, ready to call down to her sister- they needed to be cordial with Daenerys’ army after all- when the man laughed, booming and cheerful.

Jon followed her gaze to Gendry still laying in the snow, a grinning up at Arya, who was glaring down at him.

“That’s Gendry. Davos picked him up in Kings Landing.” Jon hadn’t known Arya had knew him, but she clearly did by the way she offered her hand down to help him up, and him embarrassedly telling her that her hair was longer.

“Why would he do that?” Sansa asked, wondering how Davos came upon him.

Jon let out a short chuckle. “Because Gendry is the last living child of Robert Baratheon.”

 

Sansa’s head turned to him, eyes surprised. She had been in Kings Landing at the time. The screams of women, men and children had been heard all over the city that day. “But I thought Cersei and Joffrey killed all of Robert’s bastards.”

“So did they, I assume. All I know is Davos saved him from Stannis Baratheon and sent him to hide in Kings Landing. He went to check on him when he’d smuggled Tyrion into the city, and Gendry wanted to come with him. He said he wanted to fight,” Jon shrugged, watching the interaction between his sister and Gendry, “And we need all the fighters we can get.”

The two turned and continued their way to the Great Hall. He was glad Arya had found someone like that. Someone who looked at her she was everything, he thought, sparing one last glance at his sister instructing Gendry on how Northern armour and weapons were being made at the forgery, clearly putting him to work. Jon spared one last glance at the pair, hunched over a pile of dragonglass, before heading into the Great Hall.

 

X.X.X

 

Jon was prepared for war.

Not just between the living and the dead, or even the war for the Iron Throne. He was prepared for the war that was bound to break out here, in the Great Hall, between the Red Wolf and the Dragon Queen. He was grimacing, preparing for war right here in the Great Hall. It had become the makeshift war room, maps of Westeros and lists of houses, numbers and supplies before them. It was getting updated with numbers of Daenerys’ people, and the tension between the two women was palpable.

“What did you bring with you, Lord Tyrion?” Sansa asked the man bluntly, deeming it sensible to not direct her questions at the Dragon Queen. He knew as well as she did that now was not the time for niceties.

“We came with 70,000 men and dragons, Lady Stark,” Tyrion answered, not mentioning the fact they had arrived in Westeros with three dragons and now had two.

 

“Yes, I have already been made aware of your numbers by Greyworm. I mean what supplies did you bring in order to have your people survive.” Sansa’s eyes regarded him, and Tyrion smiled back uncomfortably, warningly.

 Daenerys turned from her end of the table. “We made allies to take care of that.” Her voice was sharp, dismissive. Sansa inclined her head.

“Of course, Your Grace. I was saddened to hear of what happened to Lady Olenna. She was kind to me in the short time we knew each other, and spoke well of my brother, Robb, when no one else would. I’m assuming she was your ally with the closest resources,” Sansa questioned.

 

Tyrion nodded warily. “The food, resources and gold were in The Reach when it was attacked by Cersei’s army.”

“So, Cersei now has the Tyrell resources,” Sansa clarified. The room was now uncomfortable and quiet. Jon tried to get Sansa to look at him, to stop speaking, to think of the line she was dancing along. With horror he realised she knew. She had been dancing it for the last six years of her life, a push and pull so mild it was barely noticeable, and you were insulted before you knew it. Jon wished she wouldn’t play it, and from the look on Tyrion’s face it seemed like he did too.

Daenerys broke the silence, speaking firmly. “No. I flew to The Reach and defeated the Lannister forces before they could take the resources.”

 

Suddenly Jon was very glad Sam hadn’t come to the Great Hall today and was instead in the forge, showing the smiths examples of weapons of dragonglass he had found in order to make more. Jon didn’t like the defiant glint in Daenerys’ eyes, like she wanted to be told she was wrong in burning the Tarly’s, that she was wrong in her victory. And from Sansa’s impenetrable express, Jon thought she very well might be that person.

“Excellent,” Sansa said, though her frosty tone suggested it was anything but. “Then when are these resources arriving?”

 

Daenerys wasn’t used to the politics of the game, not here in Westeros with another woman. To her, what had happened at High Garden had been a victory, most of the Lannister army there dead or defected. She hadn’t considered the losses- no food for her army and no gold to buy more. Men she could have kept as labourer’s to rebuild what would surely be lost between the fight against the dead and the fight for the Throne. Allies she could have regained, pledges she could have honoured if she had tried to exchange the Tarly’s for Yara Greyjoy and the Dornish. And the people? The people who saw her army of Dothraki and Daenerys and her dragon destroy everyone and everything in their path? Sansa very much doubted they would see her as a saviour. She doubted they would see her as anything but another Cersei Lannister.

“They aren’t,” Tyrion answered shortly. “They were destroyed in the blaze.” His face was pained, painted into a grimace. Though he may advise his queen, it didn’t mean she would take it.

Daenerys turned her gaze on Sansa. “This is war, Lady Stark. It seems you don’t know much of it. If you aren’t prepared to get your hands dirty, then I suggest you take your leave. War isn’t pretty.”

 

Sansa bowed her head slightly but didn’t break the Dragon Queen’s stare. “Forgive me, Your Grace. Neither is starvation. I am simply trying to take stock of the resources we have in order to get through this winter. I don’t wish to bother you with such inconsequential details. As you say, I know nothing of war.”

Jon cleared his throat and drew the map closer to him. Sansa may not wield a blade, bow or conventional weapon, but her battles were in a whole other arena. Battles of wit, words and wills were where her strengths lay, hidden under layers of politeness and propriety. Under the pretty face and porcelain skin there lay a wolf, Jon thought. He only hoped she wouldn’t try to fight a dragon.

 

“How many did you say Cersei has in her army, Tyrion?” he asked, and the conversation quickly turned back to the tactical aspect of the Long Night. Sansa stayed mostly silent- she knew little of the dead- but told them that Yohn Royce was willing to oversee training of the people. Her job was done. She had laid the seed of doubt in the minds of those in the room so subtlety it wouldn’t be known it was Sansa who planted it. There was no doubt Daenerys Targaryen was a skilled conqueror, like her ancestors. Yet her pride, lack of thought and concerning detachment from her deeds made Sansa think she would be no better Queen here than Cersei. 

 

 

X.X.X

 

A few days later they were once again in the Great Hall hashing out details when Podrick entered. He bowed to them respectfully, his eyes flickering to Brienne, catching Arya’s gaze, before landing on Sansa.

“Lady Sansa, Lady Arya, there’s someone for you at the gates,” he announced. Sansa set down her papers, eying his curious expression. Podrick was suffering from the odd combination of looking shocked, worried, pleased and proud, all at once.

“Who is it, Podrick?”

Podrick looked as surprised as everyone else as he replied. “It’s Jaime Lannister, My Lady.”

 

Tyrion looked taken aback, and Brienne’s eyes widened. Jon’s brows furrowed in confusion. Daenerys looked furious. “He does realise I am now in control of the North,” she asked, and it was as much an incredulous statement as it was a question.

Sansa could see Arya roll her eyes from across the room. Her sister hadn’t much taken to the Dragon Queen either. Whilst she admired her dragons greatly, Arya wasn’t one for big speeches or grandeur, and Daenerys Targaryen was fond of both. 

Podrick looked almost apologetic as he answered. “He does, Your Grace. But he asked for Ladies Stark.”

 

Arya’s hand instinctively went to Needle as she rose, and Jon’s confusion turned to anger. He wanted to be consulted, wanted to know what the man was doing here, why he had come for the Stark sisters specifically. A feral, bitter jealousy flashed through his mind- Sansa had always loved knights. As she stood, her right hand twitched nervously before it settled. Jon wanted so badly to take it, to ease her nerves, to simply hold her hand. But the room full of people did not permit that.

Sansa’s gaze fell to him, and he offered a silent support. _Ask me to come with you and I will._

“Ghost, to me,” she called instead. The direwolf appeared in the doorway, and Jon understood. _You will always be with me._ “Ghost shall take us,” she told Arya. “He came to see the wolves of Winterfell.” Giving Jon a last nod, Sansa turned to her sworn sword.

“Brienne, would you mind accompanying my sister and I? I believe you and Ser Jaime may have much to catch up on.”

 

What Jaime Lannister must have expected upon arriving at Winterfell, it must not have been that.

He had managed a polite smile to the Stark sisters and a genuine one at Brienne before Arya had leapt at him with a speed Sansa still found surprising, and the valyrian dagger was at his throat. Jaime didn’t draw his sword, only stared back at the girl, his arms out in surrender.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut your throat where you stand,” asked Arya calmly, her hand unwavering, the blade kissing Jaime’s throat.

“I wouldn’t like it very much,” Jaime offered dryly, and Arya’s grip tightened.

“You think you’re funny, do you?”

“Enough, Arya,” Sansa said finally. “Listen.”

Arya listened for a second before shaking her head. “I don’t hear anything.”

 

Sansa gestured to the direwolf who was roaming casually outside the gates of Winterfell. “Exactly.” Ghost had barely given Jaime a second glance. Curiosity was beginning to overtake her, and she felt reassured by Brienne’s presence. As quickly as she had come at him, Arya was off him, flipping the blade in her hand and back into her belt.

“You came,” Brienne said finally, her voice holding back emotion.

Jaime looked at the warrior steadily. “I made a promise. I intend to keep it.”

Sansa took in the lone horse and the empty road behind him. “You came alone.” She had expected nothing less from Cersei- she was never going to help them. But still, Jaime’s presence surprised her. Arya swore quietly under her breath, and Brienne let out a huff of anger, and Sansa knew that they realised what was happening too.

Jaime looked apologetic as he answered. “I did.”

 

Sansa nodded, accepting. “Very well. Then why are you here, Ser Jaime?”

Jaime’s eyes flickered to Brienne, a rueful, grim smile playing on his lips. He drew his sword and lowered himself to his knees, the sword held out before him. “I’ve come to pledge myself to the Stark girls.”

Arya snorted in response. “Yeah, no thanks.”

“Please hear him out,” Brienne asked the girl quietly. She had been given a similar response from Arya once too.

 

“He pushed our brother out of a window!” Arya insisted, eyes blazing. She still remembered the thud, and then the silence. Their Mother rushing outside and finding Bran, seemingly lifeless on the ground. How she started screaming and didn’t stop.

Jaime looked regretful, his face contorted in shame. “I’ve done a great number of things I’m not proud of, I’m afraid.”

“You tried to murder a child! We were children!” Arya hissed venomously. They stopped being children the moment they left Winterfell.

“It’s alright, Arya.”

 

They all turned to the sound of the voice. It was Bran, being pushed along by Sam. “I saw you coming,” he told the man. “You stopped outside Kings Landing, where the snow was starting to fall. Then you kept riding.”

Jaime’s head hung low, barely able to look him in the eyes. “I am truly sorry for what I did to you. Nothing can make up for it.” Jaime knew that he would never make up for all the things he had done, all the things his family had done. But he had to try.

“You did it for love,” Bran said matter of factly, and Sansa could almost see Arya’s blade slicing Littlefinger’s throat. “If it hadn’t happened, I never would have become what I needed to be. It is what was seen.”

Jaime’s eyes shown confusion, but he nodded at the boy all the same.

Arya frowned, clearly not happy. “Bran might not be angry, but I still am. Why are you here, pledging yourself to us when your sister sits alone in the Red Keep? Lovers quarrel?” she sneered.

 

Before he could answer, Bran spoke again, his voice solemn. “It cost you much to come here.”

Jaime flinched, eyes flashing. He swallowed hard before looking at Bran evenly. “It cost me everything.”

“Not as much as you think, Jaime Lannister. Your sister sits on the Iron Throne built of blood, ashes and lies. The one she told to get you to stay loyal despite her atrocities was more calloused, but a lie all the same.” As Bran spoke, Jaime’s face twisted in pain and anger before settling into a grimace.

“How do you have this information?” he asked the younger man finally. Sansa and Arya shared a quick look- they would have to question Bran later. What their brother deemed important to talk about these days could be debatable.

“The Three Eyed Raven sees all,” Bran answered simply. “You were cursed to love a wicked woman. It does not mean you cannot restore your honour.” Bran nodded at them, clearly done with the conversation. Sam bid them goodbye before they took their leave.

 

“You left Cersei to pledge yourself to us,” Arya stated questioningly. “Why?”

“If I may,” Brienne interjected, “it was Jaime who helped me leave Kings Landing to find you,” she said. “To fulfil our promise to Lady Catelyn.”

“’Our Promise?’” Sansa echoed, raising a delicate eyebrow. “It was my understanding that you were a prisoner of our brother’s.” Sansa had been on edge the entire saga in Kings Landing, the whispers that the Kingslayer had been taken captive by the King in the North. She had hoped and prayed and waited for Robb, her handsome, brave brother to come and save her, free her from her cage.

But he never did.

 

"I was. Your Mother released me in order to make a trade- upon my safe return to Kings Landing with Brienne, I would never raise a hand against her family, and would see to it that her daughters were returned safely to her,” the Lannister explained.   
"By the time you got to Kings Landing Arya was gone, Robb and Mother were dead, and Winterfell had fallen," Sansa pieced the timing together.   
"There was nowhere safe for you to go," Jaime admitted. "Once you escaped, Cersei was convinced you had murdered Joffrey and wanted your head. I had made many oaths over the years I was forced to break. I intended to keep this one."

  
"So he sent me," Brienne concluded. This much Sansa knew. That he had, for some reason, despite there being nowhere for the Stark’s to go, sent Brienne to keep them safe. They were the Oathkeepers.  
"And you fulfilled the oath," Jaime complimented, something in his eyes Sansa didn't quite recognise. Pride, maybe, but not the selfish kind he bore when he had first come to Winterfell. Pride in Brienne.  
"We both did."

 

"So, you're here to continue keeping your oath to our mother?" Arya summarised, and Jaime nodded. She could imagine their Lady Mother, dignified and bearing a quiet strength. Arya had never thought of her Mother in that way before Bran had been pushed out the window. When she had fought the man, who had come to kill Bran, screaming bloody murder all the while, the red wolf of Winterfell protecting her young. Arya had never doubted her Mother’s strength after that. Her Mother was the sort of woman who freed the Kingslayer and made him swear an oath that haunted him long past her dying day.

  
Jaime nodded, letting out a small shudder, his mind elsewhere, hundreds of miles away in the Dragons Pit. "I saw what your brother brought to the parley in Kings Landing. I've come to help protect you from the dead."  
The Stark sisters were silent, wolves examining prey. Only this prey was a lion in a wolf’s den- could he be trusted? Their Mother had clearly put some level of faith in him, saw something in the Kingslayer that no one else did. And Brienne, kind, wise Brienne was encouraging of this idea. Brienne who was still loyal to their Mother’s wishes to this day.

 

"Take him," Arya said suddenly, begrudgingly. Whatever jury she had in her head had reached its verdict. "I don't need a sworn sword," she insisted when both Jaime and Brienne looked poised to object. "I can protect myself plenty, and you have sworn to protect the Stark family. Lady of Winterfell here," she gestured to Sansa, "if, as you say, Cersei still wants her head, she's going to need all the sworn swords she can get." Her eyes cut to Brienne apologetically, "no offence."

  
Brienne looked grim at the thought of the oncoming war. "None taken, Lady Arya. I agree, though I wish you would accept the help."

Arya's eyes glowed wolfishly at the man, and a cold, creeping feeling went through him. "The vows say I ask no service of you that would bring you dishonour. I think Ser Jaime and I might disagree on that."

 

"Cersei won't be pleased. Do you understand that?" Sansa asked the man. Not pleased was an understatement--Cersei had always disliked her, then hated her in little, sniping, underhand ways. Then it had blown into full blown cruelty, and now she wanted Sansa's head.   
Jaime held her gaze, clearly wrestling with himself. This was his sister, the blood of his blood, and the woman he loved, as mad and wicked as she was.  Finally, he admitted, "That's part of the appeal."

 

Sansa couldn't help but smile. Indeed, it was.   
Sansa examined the sword Jaime held out towards him. It was familiar, she had kissed the cool valyrian steel many years ago. "Widow's Wail, wasn't it?"   
Joffrey's words still echoed in her head after all this time

_'Every time I use it it'll be like cutting of Ned Stark' s head all over again.’_

 

Jaime grimaced. "I'm sorry it is what your family's sword came to."  
Arya did a double take, eying the similarities between Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper. "That's what your family did with Ice?" she demanded, and Jamie's grip tightened. Arya made a noise of disgust. "There aren't enough hours in the day to list all the atrocities your family committed against ours."

 

“No, there aren’t. And I can’t right them. But I can- I can try to be _honourable_ again. I can prove to you that I’m someone you can have on your side now.” Jaime tried.

“You aren’t suggesting we can trust you,” Sansa noticed, eyes watchful. Jaime gave a smile, all teeth.

“I don’t think you trust anyone.”

“No, I don’t. Your family taught me that,” Sansa retorted. “but a Lannister always pays their debts.” With a final consulting look with Arya and Brienne, Sansa turned back to the man. “I accept, Ser Jaime.”

 

 

Jaime was rising to his feet, sheathing Widow’s Wail when Daenerys, Jon and Tyrion finally left the Great Hall, curiosity getting the better of them. Tyrion’s face was full of surprise that was quickly masked. Jon glanced between Arya and Sansa, trying to read their expressions, but as usual they were mysteries to him. Daenerys strode towards them, her eyes full of fire and carefully concealed rage.

“Your Grace, may I introduce my brother, Ser Jaime Lannister,” Tyrion introduced, his eyes full of questioning to his brother- _why are you here?_

“Yes, I believe we have met,” Daenerys replied coolly. They had never spoken, but neither had pleasant experiences in their previous meetings- both on opposing sides of a parley and opposing sides of a battlefield. Jaime inclined his head in response, none too fond of the Dragon Queen either. “Have you come to lead your sister’s army, Ser Jaime?” the woman asked, her words sharp.

 

“There is no army.” The words escaped Jaime in a hurry, he had been holding them in since Kings Landing. Words thrown at him by his sister, a truth he had been too blind to see.

“We both know that isn’t true. I’ve conquered your army,” Daenerys answered victoriously.

“I saw you slaughter my army,” Jaime replied bitterly, the screams of the dying and the smell of burning flesh still surrounding him. “What is left isn’t coming. My sister lied.”

“Your sister said that she would march North to fight the dead,” the Dragon Queen stated, eyes narrowing.

“Just another one of her lies,” Tyrion shook his head. He had hoped he had gotten through to her. But Cersei was Cersei, and she would see their war against the dead as nothing more than a step to further her claim to the Throne.

 

“She gave me her word.” Daenerys’ words were becoming clipped, anger lacing her tone.

“Her word means nothing,” Tyrion urged.

“Then she has no honour,” she spat back.

“Cersei Lannister blew up the Great Sept of Baelor to destroy her enemies, killing all within a hundred metres. Innocent people. She didn’t make a move, she flipped the Game,” Sansa’s voice was like ice freezing over water, the chill striking them all. “She has no intention of honouring agreements. She intends to win.”

 

 “She cannot win what isn’t hers to take,” Daenerys drew herself to her full height, eyes blazing. “I am Daenerys Stormborn, and I will take what is mine with fire and blood. Cersei Lannister will burn for her lies.” Her murderous gaze turned on Jaime, who was struck suddenly with her likeness to her Father.

“You killed my Father. You tried to kill me. As there is no truce, then you are once again my enemy. You will be the first to burn.”

Jon stepped forward to intervene. “Daenerys, he left Kings Landing to warn us.”

“Warn us of what? You all claim to have already known she wasn’t coming to help,” she demanded.

 

“If you think Cersei will do anything that wouldn’t further her interests then you’re a fool,” Arya spoke up brashly. “You agreed to this war without Cersei’s army. We have been planning for this war without Cersei’s army. It changes nothing.”

“It changes everything,” Daenerys threw back. “I need assurances that she won’t make up the ground I’ve lost as soon as I march my people North.”

“If we don’t march North, it won’t matter who has made up what ground,” Jon said exasperatedly. “None of us will survive.”

Daenerys examines Jaime once again before turning to Tyrion. “If I threatened him would Cersei kneel?” she asked thoughtfully, ignoring what Jon had said.

“Maybe once,” Tyrion admitted warily, eying his brother. “But not now.”

 

“Our son threw himself from a window, and she hated him because he abandoned us,” Jaime said bitterly, and Sansa thought of little Tommen, a quiet, timid boy who loved his cat. Who said he wouldn’t like it if Joffrey killed Robb. He was never made to be king. “I left her to join your fight. I mean nothing to her.”

“Pity will earn you nothing, Jaime Lannister. If I send you back in pieces, she might change her mind. It looks like someone has already started.” The Mother of Dragons’ words hit their mark, and Jaime flinched, his left arm instinctively going to cover his gold hand.

 

Sansa straightened and stared down the queen, positioning herself so she blocked Jaime. They had both sworn oaths to each other. “You will not raise a hand to him,” she told Daenerys coldly.

Daenerys gave her an irritated smirk. “And why is that, Lady Sansa? He is nothing to you.”

“Ser Jaime is now my sworn sword,” Sansa said evenly. “He swore an oath to protect me and I swore an oath back. You forget we are in my home, Your Grace. Anyone in Winterfell is under my guard as Lady of Winterfell. As long as Jaime shields my back, he is under my protection as much as I am under his.”

 

Daenerys stared at the taller woman for a few moments, clearly battling with herself. She gave a stiff nod, knowing that once she was on the Iron Throne, she would need the support of the North. To her annoyance, Sansa’s meant as much as Jon’s. “It is a good job your brother is very fond of you, Lady Stark,” she said finally, more than a hint of warning in her words. With a final glance she turned, addressing her Hand. “Come, Lord Tyrion. We must inform Greyworm of these changes, and I will need your council on the matters.”

As the Dragon Queen swept away, Sansa let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

 

X.X.X

 

Sansa was twenty when her Jon announced to the Dragon Queen that he was not just a wolf, but a dragon.

Daenerys sat at the throne she had insisted on putting in Winterfell, a symbol that the North fell behind her, she had said. The Northerners saw it for what it really was- a symbol the North had fallen. Her face twitched with irritation as Jon told her what he had just discovered, Sam backing it with the journal of High Septon Maynard, and Bran providing knowledge that no one else would know, things that there was no way to lie.

Daenerys turned a sharp gaze onto Jorah, who gave a miniscule shake of his head to signal he didn’t know. Missandei’s eyes were wide, Varys looked disgruntled and Tyrion looked like he almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

 

“I will need proof.” Daenerys’ voice rang clear in the room, and Sam swallowed before speaking up again, an unusual anger to his normally soft lilt.

“We can show you the High Septon’s journal noting Rhaegar’s annulment and marriage to Lyanna Stark. I’m sure I brought it with me.”

Daenerys’ violet eyes slid to his, before dragging slowly back to Jon. “I mean _real_ proof.”

Davos spoke up, breaking the silence. “Your Grace, I don’t understand.”

Instead of answering the man, Daenerys turned her head to Jorah. “Ser Jorah, what did I say when my brother Viserys was killed for threatening me and my unborn child and trying to take what should have been mine?”

Jorah looked grim when he answered, his eyes flickering to Jon for a moment before answering loyally, “’Fire cannot kill a dragon.’”

 

The laughter in Tyrion’s eyes died as quickly as a flame. “My Queen-” he started, but Daenerys cut him down.

“Jorah, fetch a torch.”

“You can’t be serious,” Arya said flatly, eyes raging like a storm. “You will burn him, so you get your proof?”

“If he is a Targaryen he will not burn.” To her, it was simple. If he was like her, he would not burn. The room was unbearably tense, anger and discomfort settling on all in it.

 

“My Queen not all Targaryen’s had your ability. Not all Targaryen’s could hatch dragons and hadn’t in many years before you. This is surely not the wisest test,” Tyrion counselled, his voice smooth and rational.

“Your brother was a Targaryen and yet he burned. It did not mean he was not of you blood,” said Varys calmly, his face portraying nothing. 

“Then what would you suggest? That I simply believe him?” Daenerys queried incredulously.

“ _Yes,”_ Tyrion said with force, seeing the madness unravelling in the Great Hall.

“Why would he lie?” Missandei reasoned when her queen turned to her. “His concern is beyond The Wall. He would surely not risk your anger at his betrayal.”

“Many have lied and betrayed to steal what is mine,” Daenerys replied, gesturing to Jorah again. “I will need proof and if you want me to even consider riding north, Jon Snow, then you will give it to me.” She addressed the last part to Jon, who had been silent throughout this uproar.

 

Sansa stared at the back of his head, willing him to turn, to look at her, to acknowledge that this was madness, to say he did not have to prove anything. Why would he want to be ripped away from the only family he had ever known? When he didn’t turn, Sansa stepped forward, shrugging off Jaime’s grip.

“Jon is a good man. An honest man,” she insisted to the Mother of Dragons. “If you have any respect for him you won’t ask this of him.”

“Respect?” Daenerys arched a pale brow at the red head. “He comes to me, claiming to be my kin. The audacity to say he is blood of my blood. If he is, he is threatening my claim. If he isn’t, he was trying to abuse my goodwill to further his agenda.”

“And if he is like your brother? If he is blood of a dragon, but scorched by flames?” Sansa asked more calmly than she felt, speaking to Daenerys but her words aimed at Jon. _You have to be smarter than this._

Daenerys gave her a small, condescending smile. “Then he was never a dragon.”

 

Jorah appeared, begrudgingly bearing a torch, and the pack’s hackles were raised.

 Arya stepped towards him threateningly. “Try to go near Jon with that and I will make Sam cutting the diseased flesh off your body seem like a pleasant dream.”

“I have told you the truth. The Three Eyed Raven cannot lie,” Bran insisted, some small peek of their brother shining through.

“This is madness,” Sansa declared willfully. “You would have Jon walk through flames in an attempt to prove that he is your nephew, a test that might not work, or let the North fall to the Night King’s army.”

 

_We are killing him,_ Sansa thought in despair. _Fighting and tearing over his parentage like vultures._ She only wanted to protect him, to let him keep some blissful denial. He still struggled yet with knowing the truth, another weight he bore on his shoulders.  She tried again, a different tactic. “Howland Reed still lives, and he was at the Tower of Joy. We could send a raven-”

_“Enough!”_ Jon’s voice cut through the room like Longclaw as he rolled up his sleeve. He glanced to the Stark’s, his gaze locking with Sansa’s. As the piece of his soul comforted hers, he spoke the words

“It’s all right,” even though it wasn’t, it wasn’t at all. The bond tightening painfully, Jon didn’t drop her gaze as he took the torch from a reluctant Jorah and thrust his hand into the flames.

_You are going somewhere I can’t follow,_ Sansa thought as he turned back to the Dragon Queen, showing his unmarred hand _._

 

Daenerys examined the man before her, her _nephew,_ strong and truthful, whose family stood behind him with eyes that glowed like wolves in the woods at night. She looked at Jon Snow and saw a long-forgotten past, a Targaryen empire, a distant memory that died when she was born. She looked at him and saw a dragon, and she was Mother of Dragons. They were beasts that were loyal to her and her alone.

 

_He will come for my Throne and everything I have always thought was mine._

_He is Rhaegar’s son. The claim is his._

_He has not fought for it with fire and blood. I am the blood of a dragon, and the Throne will be mine. He can be by my side or he can die._

 

To her surprise, he sunk to his knees, head bowed low before her. “Your Grace, I do not want the Throne. I am no threat to your claim. All before still stands. The Throne will be yours to take.”

He would still fight for her, still help her get the Throne.

He was blood of her blood, and being a dragon was a lonely affair. The Targaryen blood line could sing between them once again, the way it always had been. By her side, in her bed- this was where she would keep him. She had tamed dragon’s before, and she saw no reason Aegon Targaryen would be any different.

 

“We will take it together,” she said graciously, like she was doing him a favour.

Had Jon’s head been any higher she would have surely seen the way his eyes glowed wolf wild.

 

“He did that for you,” Arya murmured bitterly, surveying the sight before them, the Dragon Queen sitting like she was made of marble. She recognised the look in Daenerys Targaryen’s eyes- she saw it in her own reflection. It was ruthlessness and desire. It was bloodlust, and she was drunk on it. Once the taste had been gotten it was hard to stop. Arya still fought with herself, her first instinct to any problem still being ‘kill it.’ But as Sansa said, ‘ _we work together,’_ and it gave the little wolf woman some satisfaction. It sang to the soil of the North in her veins and the rough stone of Winterfell under calloused fingertips- it was all for the North. And hadn’t it always been? The revenge? The bloodlust? The vengeance? It had always been for the North, for her family, for those she cared about, loyalty a thread that tied them all together, a connecting root that always brought her home.

 

Sansa did not say anything back. Daenerys had been furious with her when she refused to let the woman have Jaime, and bitter at the fact there was little she could do about it at that moment. She was surely planning a way to dispose of Sansa, to quieten her, to silence her strength and quash the power the red wolf had over the North. Jon- brave, kind, gentle- threw himself and his parentage like a sacrificial lamb at the Dragon Queen’s feet, anything to distract and channel Daenerys’ rage.

_‘I’ll protect you.’_

 

 Sometimes Sansa questioned herself, if she was still a stupid girl with stupid dreams.

Then as she watched Daenerys gaze down at Jon like he was one of her pets, one of her trophies, yet another victory braid in her platinum hair, like he was _hers,_ Sansa found she didn’t care.

Let her be a stupid girl with stupid dreams. Let her do dangerous, reckless, impossible things. She would do them twice over for Jon, for him to keep his head. 


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'When Sansa was twenty-one, The Wall fell and the nightmare began.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think.
> 
> Song Recommendations: Save My Soul by RIVVRS, I Believe In Us by LEON, So Cold by Ben Cocks, and Where's My Love by SYML and Lily Kershaw.

CHAPTER FIVE.

 

It's so quiet here  
And I feel so cold  
This house no longer  
Feels like home.

-'So Cold' by Ben Cocks.

 

The weight of war settled like snow on Winterfell, heavy and chilling. As time grew shorter, preparations were full of haste, and there was an urgency that cracked like a whip. The courtyard and lands outside Winterfell were full of Yohn Royce’s booming voice barking commands, positions and corrections to the army he now trained. Arya, Jaime and Brienne drifted amongst them to assist, eyes always watchful and grim. Most of the people in training had not been soldiers, had fought in no wars. Not that any war could prepare for this. As Yohn Royce’s attentions were elsewhere, Gendry had now taken command of the forge, the only one of them with experience forging weapons that had seen what they would be fighting. Hammers swung at all hours, the singing of metal a constant choir at Winterfell.

 

Sansa had taken charge on fortifying Winterfell- those who would not fight needed somewhere resilient and sturdy, somewhere that could offer some protection. She focused on grain redistribution, dividing what would go with the armies and what would stay in Winterfell. She took stock of plants and herbs, linens that could be torn to tend to wounds, and sent people to White Harbour to get more supplies. She had Sam prepare what he could in advance- medicines and ointments they would need, cures for diseases that would surely spread. When he enlisted Gilly, Sansa welcomed the woman’s ideas- the free folk had survived bad conditions on less than the North had, and Gilly had a hardened life that had need of those treatments before she had met Sam. She left them and Maester Wolkan to it, the old man glad of the help.

Daenerys spent her days locked inside with her most trusted- Tyrion. Missandei. Jorah. Varys. Sansa knew the woman’s mind looked not to the North but to the South, to a throne she would burn to ashes so no one could sit on but her. Sansa had a feeling that as soon as she could be seen victorious in the North, her army would turn South.

Ravens arrived at Winterfell as they always did, and as Sansa was heading to her room, she took a letter from the Rookery with her, held close to her heart, words from not long ago bouncing around her head

_‘I would have died to get you there.’_  

 

She was almost at her room when a voice spoke from the shadows,

“Another letter from the Greyjoy?”

Sansa turned to Varys, his movement silent as always.  “I’ve been made aware of your correspondence,” he continued. “Of Euron Greyjoy supposed to be getting sell swords from the Golden Company for Cersei, but he has instead taken them in his own name.”

“Ravens bearing that information have been sent everywhere. The Citadel. The Riverlands, The Stormlands, the North. It isn’t private information,” Sansa answered calmly.

Varys inclined his head. “No. Wise, sharing the news of the coming storm that is Euron Greyjoy. Neither was Theon Greyjoy’s attempts to save his sister a secret. But Theon and Yara defeating Euron and taking the Golden Company for themselves…that is not public knowledge.” The Master of Whispers’ eyes were knowing, cunning. He had always rivalled Littlefinger in his knowledge of secrets.

But it wasn’t a secret when you left it as a breadcrumb for someone to find, Sansa thought.

 

“They do this for their queen. Someone needs to hold off the Southern forces when Daenerys marches her army north,” Sansa answered plainly, and Varys eyed the woman whose eyes dared him to defy her.

“I’m sure they do. You are not wrong. I fear our queen does not focus on the threat beyond The Wall. Perhaps the knowledge would give her some reassurance.” His words were a dare right back. Of course, Daenerys didn’t know. If she knew, she would only send some of her forces South to dictate the Golden Company, and the temptation to take the Iron Thrones then and there, no matter what the cost, would be a siren song to the Dragon Queen.

“Lord Varys,” Sansa began delicately, her tone cool, but earnest and impassioned. “You once told my Father that you served the realm. That someone had to. Tell me- do you truly believe that Daenerys will take the Throne with anything other than fire and blood? That she would spare lives if it meant Cersei would win?”

“She wants to break the wheel.” It was a reply, but not an answer.

 

“Did she do so in Meereen? Did it have a safety net in place when she broke the wheel there? Or were the slaves left even more destitute than before? And what of Astapor, and Yunkai? Are they still free when their Queen left to conquer more lands?”

“They were not her people,” Varys tried. The man had fought hard to keep her alive, to get her to Westeros. He had truly believed she could rule for the good of the people. Her reputation as ‘Breaker of Chains’ and ‘Mhysa’ had given him hope. But once he had gotten to Meereen he had found that whilst slavery had been abolished, she had no way to provide a living for them. Distrust and unrest were constants in Slaver’s Bay, but he told himself- _It will be different in Westeros._ “Her place is here.”

Sansa’s gaze was as sharp as the icy winds as she replied. “She freed them, did she not? That made them her people. People she abandoned and allowed to fall back into old ways whilst she moved on to the next land to conquer. And then she left them all in the hands of a Second Son to conquer Westeros. If you truly believe in her. Truly, wholly believe that Westeros will be anything different to those places, then please, tell your queen.”

 

 It was a risk, Sansa knew. She hadn’t spent that much time with the man, and he was more of an enigma than Littlefinger. But what she did know was that Varys did not want the power for himself- Bran had told her that much. He had come from lowly, harsh beginnings and only wanted the people to be looked after.

Sansa did not think it was much to ask. But it wouldn’t be what would happen if Westeros only got more of the same.

Varys said nothing, and his silence was an answer in itself. Sansa tried one last time, speaking carefully. “I can think of a way that no innocents will be slaughtered. Let me try. Not for the Throne. For the people. Let me try.”

 

Varys was silent, examining the young woman before him. Her physical appearance blazed like a fire, but underneath she was steel and ice, her blood pulsing with the North inside her, her concern for her people, offering a home, a hearth, a heart. They had once repeated ‘Sansa Stark is the key to the North’ like a mantra, a fact that could not be forgotten or disregarded, even then.

The loyalty of the North sang in her veins, the innocent girl and the strong woman one to form a Lady who once swore, _I would make them love me._ He saw, now, why the North stood behind her despite their fear of dragons, why the most hardened people had liked her, had respected her. Westeros had seen enough fighting and fires. What it needed was the yellow flower, the promise of spring. A unity, a loyalty, someone to make the divided kingdoms a home once more.

He gave her a small, wry smile. “You’re more like your Father than you seem. But the strength is all your Mother’s.” With that, he was gone.

 

X.X.X

 

When Sansa had found her way to Jon at Castle Black, she had thought

_The pack has been divided long enough._

When her family had eventually come back, she hadn’t considered that they would leave again.

As she stood beside Bran, she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the sight of Jon and his dragon.

 

Jon had been preparing for the war against the dead in his own way, training. For weeks he had been getting to know Daenerys’ dragons, and eventually taken up riding Rhaegal. It was bitterly ironic, Sansa thought, that Jon now rode a dragon named after his Father. The dragon was a fierce beast, but it seemed to sense that Jon was blood of the dragon and accepted him as his own.

Sansa watched as Jon got Arya close to Rhaegal, her eyes wide in wonder and delight. When Sansa loved the stories of knights and princesses, Arya had loved stories of warriors and dragons. She had never thought she would see one, and here she was, a steady hand brushing the scales.

“When you come back, you’ll ride him,” Jon said confidently, _the pack survives_ echoing in his head. 

Arya nodded. “When it’s done.”

Jon looked hesitant, and Arya stared him down. “Jon. You’re not asking. I’m volunteering. Hells, I’d kill who tried to do it instead of me.”

 

Jon tried to reconcile this Arya, cold, removed, with his little sister, scrappy and determined. She had grown and changed, and they all had in different ways. They had different experiences, different scars, different horrors weaved with the ones they shared. But what they shared kept them a pack despite it all- love, loyalty, duty, _The North Remembers._ What struck him was that she didn’t see this as a burden. This was duty. This was honour. This she would take great pleasure in.

The group turned as two more figures joined.

“I couldn’t get rid of the little bastard,” Sandor grumbled, looking uncomfortably at Rhaegal. Arya glared at the man beside him, gesturing to his large, crude hammer.

“Why do you have that?” she demanded.

Gendry’s grip tightened. “Because I’m coming with you.”

Sansa and Jon’s eyes met. This was not a part of the plan.

 

Arya barked out a laugh. “You don’t even know where I’m going.” She couldn’t deny she wasn’t going anywhere- there were horses and supplies.

“I have a fair idea,” Gendry replied, staring her down evenly. “You’re going to do what you used to mutter in your sleep. You’re going to kill the queen. You’re going to cross Cersei Lannister’s name off your list.”

Arya glowered at him silently. Sansa didn’t know what had passed between her sister and the Baratheon boy, but there were mixed feelings there. She cared for him, somewhere under that rage. “We don’t need you,” Arya told him shortly.

“I lived in Flea Bottom my entire life. I know Kings Landing better than you.”

Arya gestured to Sandor. “Why do you think he’s coming?”

Gendry eyed the larger man. “I’m assuming it’s not to be your tour guide.”

“Fuck off,” Sandor grunted.

 

“ _Why?”_ Arya asked exasperatedly, her eyes flickering with hurt before the emotion was locked away. “Why do you want to come?”

“Because- you once told me you would be my family.”

“You turned me away. You said I’d be your lady,” Arya pointed out.

“I was wrong,” Gendry said pointedly, moving closer. “You’re no lady at all. You’re a wolf. A warrior. Even warriors need family. Let me be yours.”

 

Arya was silent. She hadn’t fully understood what she was offering all those years ago, she only knew she couldn’t bear to have Gendry parted from her. But he had turned her away, deeming them too different, when they weren’t, not really. Not anymore. Both had survived unspeakable things. And here he was, having found his way back to her, offering what she had offered him all those years ago with such surety. He had always seen through her, seen her more than anyone else did.

She had been through so much, changed so much, had become No One until Arya Stark had almost disappeared, and the Arya Stark who stood now wasn’t the same as she had been before. She didn’t know if she was capable of being his family, of loving those beyond her pack. But she knew she couldn’t bear to leave them both in separate wars. She couldn’t bear to part with him again. Finally, she nodded.

 

As The Hound, Robert Baratheon’s bastard and No One made final preparations and said their goodbyes, Jon nodded to them before heading to his dragon. “Rhaegal and I will take to the skies. The people will be so distracted they won’t notice you leaving.” He turned to Arya. “The brave men rode the dragons,” he told her, “and so will you.”

As Jon climbed aboard Rhaegal and took to the skies, Sansa came to stand beside Arya as they watched. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” she commented. As much as Jon begrudged his new relation, as heavy a burden the name was to bear- when he was in the sky, he looked free.

“I think we’ll have to,” Arya replied, “but we haven’t lost him. You haven’t lost him.”

Sansa did a double take at her sister, eyes wary. “What are you saying?”

Arya doesn’t look at her but kept watching the dragons in the sky. “You think you hide it well, both of you. You’re a better liar than Jon, he hasn’t had as much practice. But I was trained by the Faceless Men. We played the lying game. And every time you try to act like you don’t love him, that you don’t need him, that you don’t accept him fully as he is- you’re lying.”

 

When Sansa went to protest, her sister gave her a sly smirk. “It’s alright, Sansa. It’s nice to know you’re not the perfect Lady after all.”

With that she moved away and mounted her horse, adjusting her reins when she called down to Sansa. “I’m not coming back until it’s done,” she told her. “Do you understand me?”

She hadn’t said to Jon. There was no point. He would have ratted her out to Daenerys himself if he knew how far she was willing to take this. That if Cersei didn’t die, it would be because she herself was dead. He didn’t understand the politics as much as the Stark sisters. He understood it was a war they needed to win, but he always thought there had to be another way.

He was a good man.

But he was not there when Cersei ordered Nymeria executed and had Lady killed instead. He wasn’t there when Mycah was murdered. And he wasn’t there when their Father lost his head.

 

Sansa nodded. “Tell her Little Dove has been set free,” she responded, “and the wolves rise. Arya,” she called, and her sister glanced back at her.

“Come home.”

With those parting words, they were gone.

 

X.X.X

 

 “We have to go see the people of the North.”

Daenerys looked up in surprise to see Jon and Sansa standing before her council.

“For what reason?” she asked, irritated that they had been interrupted.

“Supplies came from White Harbour. As many people as possible will be staying in Winterfell and have already moved into its grounds. Families. Woman, children. Orphans from the war. But there are some who refuse to leave their homes,” Jon explained.

“Then they will starve, freeze or turn into the undead,” Daenerys replied simply. “You offered them shelter and they turned you away.”

 

“The people of the North aren’t frightened by winter, Your Grace. The cold and famine kill many when the harshest winters arrive. We intend to go and bring supplies, so they have hope of survival,” Sansa answered. They would not leave their people out in the cold.

Daenerys arched a pale brow. “You gave them hope of survival and they turned you away. They do not want your help.”

“All due respect, Daenerys, but there are sick and elderly who aren’t fit to travel to Winterfell. The best chance they have is if we help them, no matter what they want.” Jon sounded firm, grim. It worried him, the amount of people there were in the North, in Westeros, all of them were in danger. This would be an enemy with no mercy. They were trying to save as many as possible, bringing them to Winterfell. But he worried even that wouldn’t be enough.

“Many will die in this war, Aegon,” Daenerys said almost fondly, kindly, like he didn’t know this. Like it wasn’t what kept him awake at night. Her use of his birth name hit him like an arrow, her way of claiming him, reminding him _you are mine._ “We have helped all we can.”

Jon looked at her levelly, eyes ablaze. “I’m not asking your permission.”

 

Sansa glanced to Tyrion, the hand that stayed and steadied the queen, before turning a polite, tight smile back to Daenerys. “Jon’s parentage is no longer a secret. More people are finding out, they see him flying the skies. If you want the North to be part of your Seven Kingdoms you need them to still see him as a Northerner.”

“You mean still see him as their king,” Daenerys bit back pointedly, violet eyes narrowed.

“If you are to rule Westeros peacefully, My Queen, without another war for Northern Independence, then the North need to respect Jon both as a Targaryen and a Stark,” Tyrion suggested. “Let them go.” Sansa eyed her ex-husband. She knew he had a hard job of trying to curtail the queen, to get her to focus, to get her to be a queen instead of a conqueror. His eyes held a worry- he had already failed in staying her hand before, and it meant they had lost the food and resources of The Reach. His eyes met Sansa’s briefly, and he gave her a small, grim nod, the worry in his eyes vanishing so quickly she wondered if she had even seen it. 

Daenerys dismissed them, tired of the conversation. “Do as you wish, if it means they will bend the knee.”

 

 

They rode through Winter town, handing out supplies, food and blankets. Sansa talked with every households, checking on the sick, promising to send more supplies. Jon tried to convince those he could to come to Winterfell, that their lives were more important than what they had. Sansa appealed to them about their families, how they had been loyal to the North.

“Home is not a building with stone and mortar,” she told them gently. “Home runs through your veins, is the beating heart of those you love. You have given enough to the North. The North will understand.”

To those worried and despairing, she listened to their complaints. Jon couldn’t help but watch her. Sansa was a breath of fresh air when it was choked with despondency, providing hope when there was none. He understood, now, more than he had before how she had survived her time in captivity both in Kings Landing and by the Bolton’s. Every scar on her body was a mark of her defiance, her protection, her love. ‘ _These are my duties to the North,’_ she had told him. She had survived it all to come home.

“Winter is here,” she echoed. “There is no changing that. But we are of the North, bravery is in our blood. After the last fall of snow, it will melt, disappear, and spring will come. The flowers will bloom. Hope will grow again.”

 

She was born for this, Jon thought. I may have been born a king, but she has the heart of a true queen. All that hurt, all that pain, and it had only made her kinder, stronger, smarter. She was part wolf and spring itself. She had brought him back to life, when she had arrived at Castle Black. Her grace had breathed life, hope and fight back into him. He struggled with this. He hadn’t known anything other than fighting, rousing of men, moving on to the next enemy, the next people to help. He got people to fight. Sansa had given them something to fight for.

“It’s alright, you know.”

Jon tensed at the words. Brienne and Sansa were ahead, walking alongside the horses. Her feet were steady on the slippery ground as she passed out blankets and food, crouching to talk to children who were staring in awe at Brienne. Brienne flushed with pleasure when Sansa gushed over her to the children. “Brienne is a warrior. She saved my life. It takes courage to be a warrior. You all seem very brave, surely you must be warriors too.”

 

Jon turned his head to look at Jaime Lannister, who stood had hung back with him. The man stopped eying the surroundings and gave him a look. “It’s alright to love her.”

Jon stiffened, a flash of panic going through him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jaime gave him a wry smile. “No wonder Cersei said Ned Stark’s son wouldn’t lie. You’re awful at it.” His gaze went back to his fellow sworn sword and the young woman he was sworn to protect.

Jon hesitated, battling with himself. “How do you forgive yourself,” he asked eventually. If anyone would understand his torment, truly understand it, it would be the man beside him. “When you can’t even bring yourself to feel like it’s wrong? How cursed does that make you?”

Jaime gave a casual shrug, his eyes distant. “How can love feel wrong? We don’t choose it. The gods have a funny sense of humour that way.”

 

Jon’s eyes didn’t leave Sansa, watching her laugh with the children, her eyes that normally held such reservation sparkling with laughter. “I am cursing her. I’ve cursed us both. If I was stronger-”

“Spare me the honourable knight, Jon. This world is cruel and unforgiving. Take what happiness you can in it. As for me? I was cursed to love a wicked woman. That had little to do with her being my sister,” he said bitterly, eyes flicking between the wolves. “Sansa is not wicked. There are worse curses to bear.”

As Jon watched the woman he loved, he couldn’t help but think the man was right.

 

 

X.X.X

 

When Sansa was twenty-one, The Wall fell, and the nightmare began.

Many of Daenerys forces had already been moved to locations closer to The Wall, to Last Hearth and the surrounding villages. Sansa was with the Northern Lords when, faintly, she could hear commotion outside.

“Excuse me,” she told the Lords, dread filling her as she hurried outside.

Winterfell was a war zone. She could hear shouting, people running and gathering weapons.

“Sansa!” Sansa whirled to the sound of the voice. It was Bran, looking as animated and worried as she had seen him since he had come home.

“Bran. What is happening?” she asked him desperately, but she knew. Of course, she knew. It was what they had been waiting for, building up to, dreading and hoping would not happen. It was the moment she had feared since the day she had found Jon- it was when he was going to leave her.

“The Wall has fallen. Eastwatch is gone. The Night’s Army is coming.”

Sansa’s veins froze at his words, the cold unbearable, threatening to suffocate her.

“My Lords,” she called commandingly, “Ring the bell. They’re here.”

 

Sansa watched for a moment as the Lords scattered, barking orders to their men, and the bells started to ring. She could see Daenerys’ retinue hurrying across the grounds, Missandei translating orders in tongues Sansa didn’t know. She could see Tyrion viewing it all with a grim determination.

Sam stood behind her brother’s chair, eyes wide and frazzled. “The Wall has stood for eight millennia. How has it _fallen?”_ he stuttered.

Bran’s eyes misted, impossibly white. His voice sounded far away as he answered. “The dead dragon has arisen in blue flames.”

Sansa’s eyes met Sam’s in incredulous panic. An undead dragon.

Sansa turned to find Brienne and Jaime. “Get everyone who is not leaving inside, now. Find the list of all the children staying in Winterfell on my desk and make sure they are all in the castle. Bring them to Gilly and Little Sam. Don’t frighten them, Brienne, but do it now,” Sansa urged, and her sworn swords disappeared like smoke. Sansa twisted back to her brother and Sam. They had fortified Winterfell against the dead, they had hoped. But a flying, blue fire breathing, undead dragon? Sansa wasn’t sure there was much that could be done to protect them against that.

 

“Get Bran inside, please, Sam, and then do what you must.” They watched as Daenerys stalked out of the courtyard, adjusting her gloves, wearing a ruthless expression. Jorah and Varys followed her quick pace as she gave them instructions.

“Wait!” Sansa called to Bran, eyes scanning the courtyard. “Where is he?”

“On the battlements,” Bran replied, but she was already gone.

 

Sansa strode through the courtyard, dancing around people, ignoring the jostling. She was breathing hard by the time she had reached the battlements. He stood facing The Wall, a figure coiled tightly. “Jon!” she called out, relieved, her soul both sighing and screaming at the sight of him.

_He’s still here. We’re together._

_He is about to leave. He will be gone from me._

_‘I’ll protect you.’_

_‘Where will we go.’_

They were drawn together like magnets, running into each other’s arms like they did all those years ago in Castle Black. “I couldn’t find you. I thought you were gone,” Sansa breathed, and Jon’s arms tightened on her waist.

 

“I couldn’t leave without seeing you first. The horn sounded three times. The Wall is down,” Jon said disbelievingly. They separated but stayed close together, hands brushing at their sides. Sansa followed his gaze, squinting into the distance where you could just make out a faint outline of The Wall. Only now, East-Watch-On-Sea was gone, that entire portion of The Wall crumbled like it was nothing.

“Tormund was at East Watch,” Sansa recalled, dismayed. She thought of the wildling, with his jokes of being kissed by fire, his ferocity and intensity, the crude words that died on his tongue when she walked by. He was completely brutal, but had a surprising kindness to him, a softness when he spoke of his little girls who were currently downstairs with Gilly.

Jon’s jaw was tight, his eyes full of self-loathing. “I stationed him there. I knew it was dangerous, but- gods, Sansa, I never thought The Wall would _fall.”_

“He’ll be fine,” Sansa reassured him more confidently than she felt. “It’s Tormund. He’ll hold his own. Jon- Bran says it’s the dead dragon. The Night King is controlling it.”

 

Jon’s face paled impossibly, his eyes squeezing shut briefly. This was a nightmare, Sansa thought with horror. Father always said winter was coming. He never prepared them for this.

“What will you do?” she asked him. She had no advice for this, no council. She knew nothing of the dead, or how to fight them.

_You are going somewhere I cannot follow._

Jon considered this, his brain working quickly. “We’ll ride to East Watch. If The Wall melted into The Shivering Sea, maybe we can melt the ice and make the sea bigger using Rhaegal and Drogon. The wights can’t swim. It would freeze over again soon, but it might buy us some time.”

_Time._ They were always running out of that. 

 

Jon turned to her, memorising her face. He didn’t want to forget a single part of her. He cradled her cheek and leaned forward to brush a kiss on her forehead. Sansa’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, remembering another time he did so here, on the battlements, when they had just won back Winterfell and the white raven had just told them winter had finally come.

_‘Father always promised, didn’t he?’_

They had unknowingly stood upon a precipice then, something unknown and denied between them, something more than family, something more like _home._

They stood on another precipice now, only this one was a goodbye.

 

“I have to go,” he murmured roughly against her skin.

_Don’t ask me to stay,_ Jon begged silently. _I can never say no to you. I cannot deny you._

A lone, stubborn tear rolled down Sansa’s cheek. “I know.”

_Don’t ask me to give you permission. I cannot bear to have you away from me._

_Family, duty, honour._

 

“We will never be parted,” he told her fiercely. “Not really. You have my heart, Sansa. I leave it with you.”

Sansa surged forward and kissed him. There was so much she wanted to say.

_You saved me. You brought me back to life. You gave me hope. You helped unleash the red wolf. You were the knights, and the princes’, my king and everything Father wanted you to be. You promised we would stay together, that you would protect me. why can’t we have both?_

“You are my heart, Jon. It’s with you, wherever you go,” she said against his lips instead.

It wasn’t an I love you. Not when they were both so close and so far from everything they wanted. ‘I love you’ didn’t quite cut it. _I am half of a whole, you are my heart and soul._

 

She pulled back, and stared at him intensely, his dark, kind eyes looking at her with such tenderness that she wanted to cry. She had always thought Jon’s eyes were like a storm tearing through everything in its path. But you were never in any danger when you were in the eye of the storm.

“You will come back to me,” Sansa said strongly, both a question and a command.

Jon squeezed her hand, bringing it to his heart. “I will come back to you. I promise.”

He kissed her one last time, then strode to the wall of the battlement, standing where she and Theon had jumped off it.

“Jon,” she called desperately to his receding figure, and he looked at her over his shoulder. “Where will we go?” she asked him. He gave her a small, heart-breaking smile when he answered.

“Home.”

 

With that, he jumped. Sansa stood still on the battlement, and then there was the now familiar screech, her hair billowing as Rhaegal rose with Jon on his back and they took off into the sky.

He left her as dragons do, on wings. He mourned as a wolf did, his head turned to the skies.

When Sansa had jumped off the battlement with Theon all those years ago, she did it because she wasn’t afraid to die.

Watching Jon ride into the distance made her feel like part of her just did.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'The last time Arya Stark had been in Kings Landing, she had been running away from the lion’s den.   
> Now she was heading straight into it, a wolf come to clear out the keep.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! As I was about to post this, I realised it was crazy long and so I've split it in half. So it'll be seven chapters in total! We get some Arya POV, so let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Song Recommendations: Venus in Furs by The Velvet Underground, A Storm is Going to Come by Piers Faccini, A Little Wicked by Valerie Broussard, and Just a Girl by No Doubt.

CHAPTER SIX

 

Some are blind, but choose to see  
Lies into the truth they weave  
Some put their trust in faith  
Some say, "I don't believe."

-'A Storm is Going to Come' by Piers Faccini.

 

The last time Arya Stark had been in Kings Landing, she had been running away from the lion’s den.

Now she was heading straight into it, a wolf come to clear out the keep.

The streets seemed different, now she was older. She could still hear Syrio Forel’s instructions and corrections, his advice.

_‘There is only one thing we say to Death: ‘Not Today.’_

“Not today,” Arya breathed to herself. Snow had fell upon Kings Landing, the streets covered in white. The familiarity of the crunch under her boots grounded her, the crispness of the air soothed her, her face stinging in the cold kept her focused.

Winter had come to Kings Landing. Winter had come for Cersei Lannister. The thought made Arya smile.

 

They were hardly inconspicuous, the wolf, the stag and the hound. Arya and Gendry could blend in easily enough- they had spent many years being nobodies, unseen by the world. The Hound, however, was a problem. His tall and glowering figure standing out even in the crowds that were still on the streets of Flea Bottom- the beggars, the starving, the people selling what they could, the children playing in the snow.

Hardly anyone glanced their way, too busy staring at the snow falling from the sky in disbelief, something had hadn’t been seen in lifetimes in Kings Landing. But Arya had learnt having no one pay attention to you was almost as worrying as having everyone pay attention.

“We’re too vulnerable here,” she muttered to Gendry.

Gendry looked as at ease as ever. She envied that about him, his ability to fit in easily wherever he was. To be both somebody and nobody all at once. Arya had to go to Braavos to master it, and it hadn’t come easy to her. She still felt every whack of the stick, every stab of the knife, the scars on her stomach tight and unforgiving. It came naturally to Gendry, to be someone people liked and respected, but so blended it was like he was always there. If it was anyone else, Arya would have said it was just for his trade. But it wasn’t. it was just _Gendry._

 

He greeted people he knew with a smile on his face, his hammer strapped to his back going unquestioned. “I was a blacksmith here in Flea Bottom. The people will assume he’s a customer.”

Arya glanced back at Sandor, ignoring everybody they passed as he always did. “His face is a giveaway,” she said evenly, and The Hound gave her a leer. “If anyone recognises him from before-”

“They’ll assume he had the sense to come back to Kings Landing to survive the winter rather than roaming outside it. That he’d risk Cersei’s anger rather than die in the cold. Take your pick,” Gendry finished for her, and Arya’s eyes narrowed at him. “The rumours are bound to have spread by now, about the dead. The snow. The Dragon Queen coming to Kings Landing, the big parley. They’ll now it’s for a reason.”

“There’s a million people in Kings Landing,” Sandor grunted in agreement. “Most of the Lannister army who would have known me will have died pissing themselves and drowning in blood during the war. Any fuckers that do recognise me can die.”

Arya didn’t disagree with him.

 

She paused for a moment in the mouth of a street, and despite herself something took her down it, away from the direction of the Red Keep. What was before her was a damaged and charred street, the cobblestones chipped. Arya’s eyes followed the path until there was no more path, only the dirt of the ground where the Great Sept of Baelor once stood.

Where her Father had been killed.

 

Her mind travelled back to that day, something she rarely allowed. She had spent so much time running, training, working to avenge her family that she didn’t like to think about it. She said the names on her list to herself every night like a prayer, hoping that the action, the justice, the revenge would keep the nightmares at bay.

Thinking about it brought her back to when she was young and helpless, but standing here once again, she remembered it like it was yesterday. The sun beating down on the square, making sweat trickle down the back of her neck. Her Father falsely confessing to treason in a bid to save his children. How the crowd had hissed and shouted abuse, throwing things at the podium he stood on. the relief on Sansa’s face, thinking her begging and pleading had worked. The humiliation on her Father’s face, the most honourable man, who wore it like a badge of pride, throwing his honour away for the Lannister’s to tear apart.  Joffrey, pompous, cruel and manic, ordering Illyn Payne to bring him Ned Stark’s head.

The uproar in the square, the vultures looking for blood. Anything to distract them from the nightmare than was their own lives. Sansa’s shrill screams, her carefully done hair unravelling like her life before her. Desperately pushing and fighting through the crowd to do _something, anything._ Yoren grabbing her, yelling at her not to look, blocking her view. The thump of the axe, and birds taking off into the sky.

Silence.

 

It was gone now, all of it. Nothing remained to indicate what happened here, only the destruction left in the wake of the explosion. Cersei had burnt the place to the ground with wildfire.

Arya was glad it had all burned.

 

“Are you alright?” It was Gendry, who had joined her, any laughter in his voice dead, his face sombre. He knew what had happened here, everyone did. Ned Stark’s death was a tidal wave that had rocked through Westeros, one that had torn and ripped and splintered through everything, stealing the breath from your lungs.

Arya had loved her Father most. When he died, part of her went with him, leaving No One in its place.

_Not today._

She could still see his face now. Proud, strong, the twinkle in his eye. She could feel his encouraging hand giving her strength, comfort, courage.

_‘The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.’_

With one last glance at where the Sept had been, Arya nodded, turning away.

“Let’s go.” 

 

 Once you had worn another person’s face as a mask, Arya found it was easy to do. She found it harder in a way to get rid of Arya Stark this time, still being with two people who knew her, who shaped her. A girl was No One, and a girl was Arya Stark of Winterfell, the little wolf. She was both herself and she was No One, but both ways she was wolf on the hunt, and that was who she truly was.

She was right in that someone would notice them. That was what they needed.

 

It would be known to Qyburn as the Hand of the Queen that The Hound had been present at the Parley. That he had gone beyond The Wall. Of course he had been noticed- it was Kings Landing after all, and nothing spread faster than whispers. Gendry’s face had closed like shutters when someone he was friendly with queried about The Hound, and that had piqued interest. Qyburn frequented Flea Bottom to get ingredients for his madness, and whispers of The Hound’s appearance with the blacksmith spread. Whispers of how the Dragon Queen had came to Kings Landing with two dragons because the third was dead spread like wildfire, reaching him quickly. He thought he was very clever, pieces together the rumours and pin-pointing them to Gendry’s forge.

The mystery of the dragon’s demise was a siren song to the Hand, the allure of finding out what had happened hard to resist. He had come to the forge where they had laid their trap, asking questions and making demands as to how the dragon died.

“Knowledge is power,” Arya told the man as she killed him. But curiosity killed the cat.

 

He had gotten too cocky. Kings Landing was desperately undermanned, so with the impression that Euron Greyjoy would soon be arriving with the fleet of the Golden Company he had come with only one guard.

The Golden Company would be arriving on the shores any moment now, Arya thought as The Hound snapped the guard’s neck, but under the instruction of another Greyjoy.

Arya barely gave the guard a glance but examined his uniform. “Put it on,” she instructed Gendry before turning back to Qyburn’s body. “You won’t want to look at this part.”

“That was the man that created the wildfire that blew up the Sept?” he asked quietly.

Arya nodded evenly.

“I lost friends that day. He should have died screaming,” Gendry said finally, and started pulling on the uniform. Arya couldn’t say she disagreed.

 

Both watched anyway as she made the sacrifice to the Many Faced God. The Hound wasn’t phased- he had seen and done worse in his years. When Arya turned back to them, not as herself but Qyburn, Gendry was silent, his eyes the only thing visible in his helmet.

She almost got nervous when he clearly decided he had seen things just as weird as that. Instead, he gave her a knowing look, his eyes seeing right into her soul. Seeing Arya Stark and No One and Arry and the little wolf, seeing her better than she saw herself. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he said knowingly.

“Let’s go kill the fucking queen already,” Sandor barked impatiently.

 

X.X.X

 

They entered the Red Keep, Gendry pushing at Sandor roughly ahead of him, and Sandor snarled back at him. Qyburn swept ahead of them to greet his queen.

“My Queen, I have something for you,” he said graciously.

“Unless it is news that the dragon bitch has perished, I doubt it is of any interest to me, Qyburn,” Cersei replied bitingly, not looking up from her papers.

“Unfortunately, not yet,” Qyburn said grimly. “Someone who witnessed one of her dragons die.”

 

This caught Cersei’s attention, and she looked up, a cruel, lazy smile appearing on her face. “The Hound. Were you caught begging for scraps?”

“He was caught in Flea Bottom, boasting about getting away from Daenerys Targaryen alive.”

Gendry shoved Sandor forward, and he bared his teeth at Cersei. “I’m not fucking dying for some insane cause. Dragons, the dead, and you. I thought I’d take my chances here.”

Cersei smiled tightly. “Ser Gregor will be so thrilled you’ve joined us. Won’t you?” The Mountain stood by a wall, silent and imposing.

“Start talking.” Cersei’s gaze turned to Sandor, her gaze blazing. “What happened to the dragon?”

 

Sandor’s jaw tightened. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“No, you were never as loyal a dog as your brother,” Cersei conceded, coming around from behind the desk, her hands clasped before her. “And yet you came back.”

“I came back for one reason. Giving you information isn’t it,” The Hound spat, and Cersei’s face twitched in irritation. Qyburn moved closer to his Queen, standing to her right. Blood pounding. Grip on weapons tightening. Veins freezing, ice taking over, a cool calmness spreading through your body.

“Then why are you here?” Cersei entertained. The Hound gave a snarling smile.

“To kill my fucking brother.”

 

The Hound, the wolf and the stag leapt into action. Sandor tore out of his loosened bonds, and Gendry threw him a weapon as he swung his hammer into the two guards in the room. Qyburn brought his queen back, out of danger as a brutal fight broke out between The Hound and The Mountain.

“Your Grace,” Qyburn said in alarm, reaching for her. Cersei jerked back towards her Hand, and panic could almost be seen in her eyes.

“The Golden Company are coming,” she insisted over the clanging of swords. With an almighty roar, Sandor shoved his sword under The Mountain’s helmet, driving the blade up under his chin into his skull. The Mountain stumbled, blood dripping down his armour. With a heavy-handed blow, Sandor knocked the helmet off his brother’s disfigured head.

Cersei’s face was white when The Hound said lowly to Gregor

“I told you it would be me that killed you.”

With another blow that crushed his skull, The Mountain fell for the last time.

 

Cersei looked grim as she backed away. There was no one to call to. The Golden Company had not yet come through Kings Landing, or so she thought. She heard the marching of an army, and relief flooded her veins. Euron Greyjoy was here. As the Golden Company started pouring into Maegor’s Holdfast, she shouted orders to them.

“This man killed my Queens guard. Slay him.”

“They don’t answer to you.” An unfamiliar voice called as he stepped into the room. The kraken on his armour showed he was an Iron Born.

_What is dead may never die._

 

“Did Euron send you? Too scared to come to the mainland himself?” Cersei said venomously.

Theon Greyjoy gave Cersei Lannister a tight, condescending smile. “We’re under orders of a different queen.”

 

“Your Grace,” Qyburn tried, and the Mad Queen whirled to him. A flash of steel and her hand went to her throat, coming away covered in blood. Qyburn raised a hand to his face, and Arya’s eyes glowed like a wolf as she watched Cersei Lannister fall to her knees.

 “The Stark’s send their regards.” Cersei’s eyes were wide as she choked on her on blood, and Arya watched, fascinated as Cersei realised there was no one to help her. Her madness had driven them all away. All the terrible things the woman had done. The horror she had bred into the world. The children she could not control. Cersei’s desperation to be the Queen, to control the Seven Kingdoms that cost her Father his life.

 

_Lions should not concern themselves over the opinions of sheep. But they should hide when it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing._

“The North remembers,” Arya told the woman, because that is all she was. A person. Not a formidable being to haunt your nightmares, just a person, frightened and alone. “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. The wolves are rising, Cersei Lannister. And you’ve lived just long enough to see it.”

 

The Golden Company poured through the city, quickly overcoming the city guards. They were imprisoned in the cells to be given time to choose a side. So many were just men trying to feed their families. Few were loyal to the Lannister’s, but you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Now the new rule could begin. Arya nodded to Theon as he passed. He had changed so much from when she had known him. They all had. He was less cocky, and now bore a confidence that came from being salt of the earth, from fighting your way from the bottom to becoming truly yourself. His sister Yara had that confidence already, and Arya liked her for it. The Iron Born were hardy, they were the ocean itself, vast and unforgiving. But water could also wash you clean.

_‘I would have died to get you there.’_

 

Sansa had been close to Theon. She had brought him back to himself when no one else could, reached out a hand into the pit of darkness he was in and dragged him out. He was both a Greyjoy and a Stark, and he owed the Stark’s a debt. One he was ready to pay. The loyalty of the Iron Born came not from bargaining, or brutalisation. It came from kindness. It was Sansa Stark who had banished Reek and brought back Theon, as broken as he was. It was Jon Snow who had put the fire in Theon’s belly to rally his men to save Yara. It came from the promise of spring. So now they stood, at the side of the Stark’s, whoever’s side they were on. Not because a child was held hostage as a ward, as Theon had been for all those years. But because the bonds forged in the North proved stronger than those who tried to break them.

 

All this bother for a throne, Arya mused as she stood in the now empty throne room in the Red Keep. So many people dying. Men and women rallying to causes because of the weight of a name. Baratheon. Lannister. Targaryen. All the bloodshed and the heartache, the murders and the betrayals, people desperate and mad and willing to do anything to sit upon this chair. All the wars over whose claim it was, who was the rightful heir, who deserved it, based only off the name they bore.

All the players making moves on the board for years. The puppeteers behind the curtains. The actors. The driving forces. Those willing to flip the board to win.

When all it took to take the Throne was No One.

 

X.X.X

 

The last time Sansa had been barricaded in a building during a battle, she had been a young girl. During the Battle of Blackwater, she had been nervous, anticipating. In her mind the battle had no risk for her, even as Cersei, Shae and Sandor told her otherwise, only potential reward. Possible liberation by Stannis Baratheon. Her tormentor, Joffrey, out in battle.

_‘I pray for your safe return, my Lord. Just as I pray for the King’s.’_

The cruel irony that she was now locked in Winterfell with the man she said that to, who she had wished death upon with soft voice and sweet words. She did not wish death upon him now. Tyrion had proved useful, the tamest of the lions. She had tamed two of them now, both brothers sitting side by side. 

At the Battle of Blackwater, Sansa had everything to gain. Now, here, in her home, her family once again scattered to the winds, she had everything to lose. He was out there somewhere, fighting, defending them. She knew this. She just knew he was still alive because if he wasn’t, she would feel it. Sansa hated battles the most. Ever since she and Jon had been reunited at Castle Black, they faced it all together, side by side, allies and equals. But war was one place he would not permit her- she knew nothing of it. She found herself wishing she was like Arya, so she could fight.

_‘You’re more warrior than anyone I’ve met.’_

As much as she wished she could fight with him, that was not her duty to the North. She was needed here. _There must always be a Stark in Winterfell._

 

Before, in Kings Landing, she had sung and prayed. Now there were no songs that would come out of her, Little Bird dead and buried. Her voice only spoke orders and commands, attempts at soothing words and comfort. There were no gods to pray to, Sansa knew that now, and if there were, they were not listening.

She had recognised Cersei agitation in Maegor’s Holdfast. It was plain to see, in her barbs and biting tone, her cruel advice. A lion pacing its cage. Now Sansa truly understood it for what it was. It was fear. She had learnt a great deal from the woman. How to rule was not one of those things.

Sansa would not crumble and lose hope, she swore to herself. She would be strong, like her Lady Mother. The people of the North needed someone to turn to, a leader. Someone to give them hope.  Cersei had crumbled at Blackwater, unable to keep her people strong, unable to assuage their fear. Sansa had done it then, and she would do it now. The people of the North did not need her to sing and pray. They were more resilient than the highborn ladies of Kings Landing. The people sung and prayed enough themselves. They needed the red wolf of Winterfell.

 

The days passed slowly, and Sansa busied herself on checking on everyone. She told stories to the children. She gave orders and listened to the Lords. Bran warned them as the battle drew closer to Winterfell. Jon and Daenerys had used Drogon and Rhaegal to melt the ice into the Shivering Sea, but winter had come, and it did not take long for the ice to freeze back over. The Army of the Dead were getting further and further into the North. To Daenerys’ dismay, many of her Khalasar were perishing in the unforgiving weather alone, and the horses were dying as there was nothing to nourish them. _All these people have been condemned to death,_ Sansa thought. If they had stayed in Essos, they never would have faced this.

 

“May I speak with you?” Tyrion asked, and Sansa nodded, eyes guarded. The man sat opposite her, his face examining her. “You’re hardly like the girl I was married to, years ago,” he told her.

“Time and experience will do that, Lord Tyrion,” Sansa clipped back.

Tyrion gave her a grim smile. “I have no doubt. I’m sorry for all your troubles, Lady Sansa. But they’ve made you stronger. You always were, even as a girl in Kings Landing. It was hidden, and few saw it. But it was there. You were smart, with a quiet rebellion,” he complimented, taking a sip of his drink. “You’re even smarter now.”

Sansa looked at her ex-husband evenly. He was a clever man. He no doubt knew of her disapproval of Daenerys, and Varys had no doubt told him of their conversation. Yet Daenerys never found out.

 

“I may be young, but I have seen a lot in my years. I have been a hostage, a prisoner of war. Sold and played for my title. Raped and defiled by those who would have me be silent, because they needed my claim to Winterfell and nothing more,” Sansa threw her words at him calmly, cutting like shards of glass. “You need to be smart to survive. You know that.”

“I do. You’ve learnt. From your Father. Your brother. Your Mother. Cersei. Baelish. Myself. All of us. You were used as a pawn, and you were learning the whole time. They cut your wings, but the forgot you had claws,” he sounded almost admiring. Something in his tone pulled Sansa short, and she eyed him.

 

“What do you want, Tyrion?”

Tyrion’s face twitched with something- bitterness, amusement. “Council.” When Sansa said nothing, he continued. “You do not like our Queen.”

Sansa raised a brow. “She is an accomplished conqueror, one cannot begrudge her that.”

“But,” he added for her, knowing there was more to what she was saying.

“But I fear she doesn’t know when to stop.”

Tyrion considered this, eyes solemn. It was something he was starting to worry about. He had been since the attack on High Garden. He had thought he was doing the right thing, supporting Daenerys. He thought being her Hand meant she would listen to him. But she was getting increasingly harder to council, the longer she spent in Westeros, the more she became like her Father. Power did that. It poisoned and corrupted. And she wanted it, absolutely. She would stop at nothing to get it. And where would that end?

 

“Her majesty has proposed a marriage alliance,” Tyrion told Sansa instead.

Sansa nodded, lips in a thin line. “I had guessed she would do as much.”

Tyrion gave a huff of laughter. “She wanted us to remarry.” Seeing Sansa’s reaction, or lack thereof, he leaned back. “But you assumed that as well.”

“I assumed she wouldn’t trust that I would stay loyal and thought revalidating our marriage would be a way of controlling my claim to the North,” Sansa said simply.

“I told her that it would make the people dislike you so much that the title would fall to your sister.”

 

Sansa’s eyes flashed with surprise at the lie, and Tyrion caught it, giving her a weary smile. “I have no interest in being Lord of Winterfell, Sansa. I don’t like the cold, and our marriage didn’t end well the last time, with both of us being accused of murder.” All joking left him as his eyes softened. “My family committed enough atrocities against yours. You shouldn’t suffer at our hands any longer.”

Sansa is oddly touched.

_‘Then so my watch begins.’_

There were worse men to have for husbands, she knew that now. “Thank you,” she replied sincerely.

 

Tyrion shifted, his fingers tapping on the arm on his chair, clearly considering something. “Don’t thank me. I barely had to do anything. Your Jon was rather insistent that he wouldn’t make you do it. That you had been forced into marriages enough in the past. That you weren’t marrying anyone unless you wanted to.”

_‘Your Jon.’_ He knows, he must know. How could he not? Sansa searched his unreadable eyes before speaking finally.

 

“Why are you sharing this with me?” he hadn’t said it as a threat. Instead he was telling her as if he were doing her a favour, like he was in on a secret.

“Because I believed in Jon when he said that if Daenerys came into Westeros blazing and using her dragons, people would fear her. They’d just think she was more of the same.”

“She did say she would take what was hers with fire and blood,” Sansa reminded him icily, “or did you forget?”  Tyrion’s face twisted into a grimace.

 

“When she made me her Hand, I thought I could stay her. Make her better than what has come before. But fire and blood- she’ll take what is hers how she pleases. Nothing I can say seems to steady her or make her stop. I’ve tried to be smart,” he admitted, the words like acid in his mouth. “But I fear I’ve made a mistake.” His eyes said what his lips did not- he should never have brought the Dragon Queen to Westeros.

“Good,” Sansa replied coolly. “Then you can live in fear of burning like the rest of us.”

 


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Jon was used to battle. He hadn’t exaggerated when he said he had done nothing but fight since leaving Winterfell all those years ago. But he had never been in a fight like this.'
> 
> See the end for notes!

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

You won't be the only one  
I am unfinished, I've got so much left to learn  
I don't know how this river runs  
But I'd like the company through every twist and turn.

-‘Grow As We Go’ by Ben Platt.

 

Jon was used to battle. He hadn’t exaggerated when he said he had done nothing but fight since leaving Winterfell all those years ago. But he had never been in a fight like this. They were trying, giving their all. The Free Folk fought fiercely, Tormund a hellish blur. Jon had breathed easy when he found his friend, shocked and scraped up at The Wall. The Northerners fought for their home, winter itself in their veins, unyielding. The Unsullied were whip fast and efficient under Greyworm’s command. The Dothraki were brutal, a torrent of battle cries and bloodshed. Daenerys commanded her army and Drogon like a true conqueror, burning all the wights she could. Jon did the same, trying to get at the Night King, but none of it was enough.

 They were still vastly outmanned and being pushed back further south, closer to Winterfell. Closer to home. Closer to Sansa. The thought made him desperate. He could picture her now, tall and strong, bearing the weight of Winterfell and all its inhabitants on her shoulders and making it look like a pair of wings. He couldn’t let her face this. He had sworn he would protect her, and he intended to do so.

 

Bran had told him how the Night King had been created, how he was to be destroyed. The weapons Jon bore felt like lead, the weight of the responsibility and duty pining him down and stealing his breath. He knew that in Winterfell Bran watched and waited for the right moment. He had told Jon he would know when the moment had arrived. Jon worried for the boy- he was not the brother Jon remembered, but the Three Eyed Raven. All that was sacrificed for him to become so, and Bran had told him

“It was all for this. To stop this.”

 

Jon watched as in the distance the Night King rode Viserion. The dragon had somehow gotten more fearsome, the icy tinge to its scales and those piercing, unhuman eyes. It- for it was an it, no longer the dragon child of Daenerys- flew on tattered wings and the blue fire it breathed burnt just as hot as it’s old brothers. It had no recognition of its mother or brothers, only a thirst for blood rivalled by the Night King.

Jon’s blood froze when he noticed the looming silhouette of Winterfell come into view behind them. He had hoped the battle wouldn’t be pushed back as far as that, but the army of the dead seemed never ending. Hope was for children, Arya would tell him. There was no place for it in the world we know.

 

He didn’t agree. Hope was molten copper hair, eyes so blue you could drown in them. Hope was a pale hand that reached out and grabbed yours and wouldn’t let go, dragging you away from death and darkness. Hope was a clear voice that sang a siren song every time it was used. Hope was wildness in her veins, a breath of fresh air promising the spring. A voice that both said, ‘ _Winter had come’_ and _‘spring will come again.’_ Hope was

_‘where will we go.’_

And he couldn’t let that die.

 

Something caught his eye above the battle, and he found himself squinting to stare at Viserion. The dragon’s unearthly undead blue eyes were starting to flicker, and mist over with white. He knew that. He had seen it before, beyond The Wall. Bran was trying to warg into the dragon.

Jon just needed to buy him more time.

He circled Rhaegal a last time, ordering _‘dracarys’_ with all his might, perishing wights that died screaming before they even reached the battle. He then flew to an empty area, ignoring Daenerys’ cries of

“Aegon, what are you doing?” that carried in the wind. They needed Drogon and Rhaegal on their side, they couldn’t risk losing another dragon, or the War for the Dawn would be lost.

 

Rhaegal’s massive wing spread kept any wights at bay as Jon leaned into his scales. It had surprised him, the bond he had felt with his dragon after a relatively short amount of time. It was nothing compared to what he had with Ghost, Ghost being an extension of himself. He was a wolf, a Northerner, a Stark. But somewhere amongst the ice in his veins there was also fire, and it sang to the dragon. He rested his hand on him soothing, his voice firm as he spoke.

“Go to Winterfell. Protect it. You can’t kill the people of Winterfell but protect them from the undead. Protect her. Please, Rhaegal. Go.”

He hoped the dragon understood, Jon thought for a brief moment as he slid off his back, already bearing Longclaw. As soon as Jon hit the ground running Rhaegal let out a screech and took off towards Winterfell, hovering above it as he burnt wights coming near.

He hoped Sansa would understand. “I told you I’d protect you,” he muttered to himself before flinging himself into battle.

 

X.X.X

 

Sansa’s head jerked up at the sound. The wights were gaining closer, she knew that. Brienne and Jaime had escorted her to the battlements where they ordered flaming arrows to be shot from, as well as arrows of dragonglass. Barrels of oil were ready to be tossed at the undead if they got too close. Eventually, despite the arrows hitting their targets, they were starting to run out, and the undead seemed to be never ending. She could see the three dragons circling the crowded battle field, orange flames and blue alike unforgiving to any that crossed their paths. As the crowd moved closer, Jaime turned to Brienne, face grey.

“Take Lady Sansa inside.”

Both Sansa and Brienne looked at him sharply.

 

“These are my people out here, fighting,” Sansa gestured. “I’m not abandoning them.”

“You won’t be abandoning them. Your people need you, Sansa, and they need you safe and alive. We don’t know what will happen-”

“You mean to Jon.” The words made her feel empty, hollow, and she looked out again to Jon and Rhaegal flying the skies.

“Yes,” Jaime said, surprisingly gentle. “He left you in his stead, did he not? It’s our job to protect you. Let us.”

 

Brienne looked at him angrily. “And why am I to go inside? The woman?” she protested pointedly, and Jaime gave her an even look.

“Of course, it’s not because you’re a woman, Brienne. You know me. It’s because they need instruction out here and I have experience commanding an army. You’re better than me in close quarter combat, you’ll be better to guard Sansa.”

Brienne looked touched, emotions flitting across her face- worry, pride, anger, love. “Jaime,” she said, and there was nothing else to say. There wasn’t any time.

Jaime gave her a faint smile. “We are the oath keepers,” he told her, and she nodded jerkily, chin rising.

 

Once back inside, Sansa and Brienne listen to orders being shouted and arrows being released, and the ever closing in marching of the wights. Suddenly, Sansa could hear a loud, familiar, steady beating sound, and the screeching of Rhaegal. Her head whipped to Bran, who sat as calmly as ever.

“Is that one of the dragons?” she asked him, and Bran nodded.

“It’s Rhaegal. Jon sent him.”

Sansa’s heart was in her throat she quashed down panic and spoke again, her voice controlled. “And why is Rhaegal back at Winterfell without Jon?”

Bran’s eyes were far away, and Sansa was about to nudge him to remind him she’d asked a question when he spoke again, with his voice, but words that weren’t his own.

“I promised I’d protect you.”

_Jon._

 

X.X.X

 

“Come on, Bran, come on,” Jon found himself muttering as he decimated all wights that crossed his path. He was cutting a path towards the Night King, who still flew overhead. Daenerys’ had been trying and failing to get close to him, but White Walkers were throwing ice spears towards Drogon as they had Viserion, and any time she got near she quickly had to retreat.

“These fuckers aren’t dying, we’re just making more!” Tormund shouted to him over the roar of battle. And he was right. For every undead they cut down, three of their men were dying, and then being reanimated as wights.

“If we kill the Night King, it’ll stop!” Jon yelled back. Tormund let out a holler as he drove a dragonglass blade into a white walker.

“I’m all ears!” he bit back, “but how are we going to get at him?”

Jon swept Longclaw in an arch, severing the heads off wights surrounding him. “We wait for the signal!”

“I hope this signal is soon!” Tormund retorted, and then got lost in the crowd. Jon fought through wights that were piling on him, but he couldn’t see his friend. Jon heard a low, vibrating screech, different to that of Drogon or Rhaegal. He whipped his head up to see Viserion, eyes now steadily white, flying uncontrollably.

 

“That’s the sign!” Jon roared, heading straight for the dragon Bran was controlling. As he moved closer, he knew they would have to be fast. Bran and the Night King were clearly struggling for control of Viserion as the undead dragon jerked about before tossing the Night King off its back, taking him by surprise. As he fell out of the sky to the ground. Daenerys’ swooped in immediately, commanding Drogon with a _‘dracarys’_ that would have burned as much as the flames. Even Drogon’s flames did not seem to do much harm, the fire going out before it could harm the Night King. Version turned, still controlled by Bran, blue stream of fire heaved at the Night King, pinning him unlike Drogon, whatever undead magic it was.

 

_‘Winter is coming.’_ With Father in the woods. Sitting by a fire. Ghost. ‘You may not have my name, but you have my blood.’

_‘Fire and Blood.’_ Daenerys’ home of Dragonstone. A father he would never know. Flying the skies with Rhaegal. The Heir to the Iron Throne. ‘Fire cannot kill a dragon.’

_‘The pack survives.’_ Teaching Bran to use a bow and arrow. Sitting with him the in godswood. Giving Arya Needle. Holding Rhaegal with her, promising ‘the brave men rode dragons.’  Sitting together behind the Stark table. The wolves of Winterfell. ‘You’re one of us, and always will be.’

_‘Where will we go.’_ Teasing her as children. Holding her in his arms in Castle Black. Riding side by side. A cloak to mark him a Stark. Walking the grounds of Winterfell. Bickering. Blue eyes shining at him. Vising the people of the North. Leaving the North in her hands. ‘it was all for you.’ A kiss so light he thought he dreamt it. Her heart beating hard against his own. A delicate yet strong hand in his. ‘We protect each other.’

 

With last thoughts of Sansa, Jon leapt through the fire, knocking into the Night King. He tore at the Night King’s burning armour

_‘He is the storm’_

Raised his dragonglass blade and shoved it into the Night King’s chest.

_Dragonglass to the heart gave you life. Dragonglass to the heart will take it away._

X.X.X

 

A noise from Rhaegal is the first indication something has changed.

Sansa’s head raised from her brother, his eyes starting to change back from white to brown as he slumped in his wheelchair, exhausted.

“The storm is dead,” Bran muttered ominously before falling unconscious.

“Bran! Bran, I don’t understand. Sam!” Sansa called in alarm, feeling at her brother’s clammy face. Sam was there immediately, taking over. He clasped Bran’s wrist with his fingers until he was satisfied.

“He’s alright, he’s just exhausted himself. Warging can be tiring, and he warged into an undead dragon. Just give him some time.”

“How do you know?” Sansa demanded.

“I read it in a book,” Sam explained, waiting for a mocking that didn’t come.

 

Sansa felt slightly better at Sam’s reassuring words, and her brother was gaining more colour. The noises outside Winterfell died down in a way they hadn’t since before the battle had begun. She rose quickly, heart pounding. Was this it? Did the silence mean their men were dead?

And then, Rhaegal roared again.

Unable to take it anymore, she turned to Sam. “Stay with Bran,” she said, and strode from the room.

“Sansa!” Brienne called after her, but she didn’t stop. Sansa didn’t stop until she had thundered up the stone steps, winding her way to the battlement. She could see the army outside Winterfell, a mixture of the living, scraped up and bloody, badly wounded, and the dead. She blanched at the sight, _they died for us to live._ She spotted Jaime, his face turned up to the sky, dropping his sword in exhaustion.

 

Every step she took felt like it took eons as she drew closer to the battlement that would face North. Once she got there, she wasn’t prepared for what she would see. Death on a massive scale. There were so many dead she wanted to weep. There were injured, and barely moving. Moans and cries she could hear from there. It was grim, but it wasn’t as bad as it should have been.

Where were the undead?

 

“They’re gone.” It was Podrick, sounding as disbelieving as she felt. “There was a commotion with the dragons, and then they just- fell. Like snow.”

“Bran was right,” Sam said in awe. Sansa didn’t know he had followed her, but she vaguely recalled him passing Bran off to Gilly before she left the room. “He said if the Night King fell, they all would. He created them all, and the magic line has died out.”

Rhaegal let out another screech, the beat of his wings sending Sansa’s hair flying around her. The dragon almost looked like he was dancing in victory, Sansa thought as she approached him.

“Sansa,” Brienne hissed, moving to step forward, but Sansa held out a hand to stay her.

 

“It’s alright, Brienne.” Sansa walked closer to the end of the battlement, closer to the green dragon. He eyed her, dark eyes unblinking. A safe enough distance away, she stopped, barely breathing, but Rhaegal looked at her with no malice, only curiosity.

“Well, what are you still doing here?” Sansa asked him more calmly than she felt. “Go get him!”

Rhaegal let out another victory cry before swooping away from her.

_Bring him back to me._

X.X.X

 

They had won the war, Jon thought when they came back to Winterfell, but it did not feel like a victory. So many dead. He felt each one weigh heavy on his soul. Men, women. They had tried to end the battle as quickly as possible, but Jon could not help but think of his mistakes, what he could have done differently, how he could have helped them. Daenerys seemed to have no such concerns.

Hyped on their victory, she could already hear the songs that would be sung of this day. How she would be held the saviour of the North. Yes, Aegon had killed the Night King, but with her army, and her blessing. She had done him a favour by agreeing to fight this battle when she had come to rule Westeros. To conqueror it. “We’ll use our momentum, Aegon,” she declared to Jon the next day. “You and I will fly to Kings Landing tomorrow and burn Cersei Lannister.”

 

Jon was silent for a moment before answering. “Surely you can’t be serious.”

“Of course, I’m serious. Tyrion, Varys and Missandei disagreed with the plan. But they are not the Queen. No raven has been sent, she won’t have yet heard of our victory. Cersei won’t be expecting us.”

“Daenerys, your army has been decimated. Most are dead. Jorah is dead. Beric is dead. Eddison, Davos. Tormund and Greyworm are gravely injured. Yohn Royce of the Vale, Lord Glover. They died fighting for us.”

Daenerys dismissed him with an icy smile. “If they died fighting for _me,_ Aegon, it would be in taking Kings Landing. It’s what I came here for and what I intend to do. Besides, I don’t need an army just yet.”

Jon stared at her warily. “What do you mean?”

“You and I will fly to Kings Landing and burn it to the ground.”

 

Jon could feel his stomach drop as it did when Rhaegal dived. He knew madness had taken her, but he never thought she would resort to this. Daenerys saw something in his expression, because she carried on. “Cersei Lannister promised to march her forces North to join us. Instead she betrayed us and marched them to make up the ground I had lost. She dared to think she could cross me.”

“It doesn’t matter now-” Jon started, but Daenerys turned on him, eyes blazing.

“She disobeyed the rightful Queen. I see it now, Aegon. How to break the wheel. How to truly be Queen. I did it when I hatched the dragons. To start over, to truly start over, you need to burn it all to the ground. All of it.”

Jon’s mouth was dry. The million people in Kings Landing. She wanted to kill them all.

 

Daenerys stroked his face, her nails biting into his skin painfully. “We’ll leave the Red Keep until last. So Cersei can see she has lost it all. And the we’ll kill her too. We’ll burn them all. Start again. We’ll be reborn, you’ll be a true dragon. It’s the only way.” Her voice sounded excited, hungry. Her eyes were manic and held wildfire in them.

“You can’t, because Cersei is already dead,” Jon ground out. Daenerys’ hand stilled.

“You had her killed?” she asked, sceptically.

Jon nodded, his face stinging, eyes dark. “I took the Throne for my Queen.”

 

Daenerys started to smile with pleasure, and then there was a flash of steel. Her hand travelled to her stomach and came away covered in blood. Her face was surprised. “But you took the Throne for me. You pledged me your forces,” she stated weakly.

Jon clenched the blade, eyes dark as the night sky, face impassive. “I took it for _my_ Queen. When I left the North, I left it with Sansa. I couldn’t pledge anything more to you than myself.”

The Dragon Queen had a faint, bitter smile on her face. “Cersei said Ned Stark’s son wouldn’t lie.”

Jon eased her down. He wished she had never left where she had come from. Maybe she would have been happier. Maybe she would have lived. Maybe he never would have learned the truth. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He smiled, sad and wild. The dragon and the wolf. “I’m not Ned Stark’s son.”

 

Daenerys looked almost serene. She had been playing the Game of Thrones most of her life, whether she knew it or not. She had fought and she had won and she had lost, and it had been horrible and heartbreaking and glorious. _When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die._ All those visions. The House of the Undying. She had seen so many futures she could have had. Maybe now she could join Drogo and Rhaego. 

“You were never going to be a queen. Only a conqueror,” Jon told her, his words echoing those from long ago. Echoing her past and her family and how the Targaryen empire came about in the first place, a shooting star of a family that burned bright and died fast.

_‘You weren’t made to sit on a chair in a palace.’_

“You’re a conqueror, Daenerys Stormborn,” she echoed, before the Mother of Dragons breathed her last.

 

Winterfell was quiet. The North was quiet. Westeros was quiet.

And then, the truth.

That Daenerys Targaryen was not the true Heir. That she went mad with power. That her people abandoned her. That she wanted to burn it all to the ground. That Jon Snow stopped that by killing her, as Jaime Lannister killed her Father. That it was a mercy.

That Jon Snow was not a bastard at all. That the man the people chose to be King in the North was actually Aegon Targaryen, Heir to the Iron Throne. That he saved the Free Folk. That he led and won the Battle for the Dawn. That he defeated the Night King and the army of the dead for good, and there would never be need for another Wall. That he had the companionship of a direwolf and two dragons.

That Bran Stark controlled an undead dragon. That Arya Stark killed Cersei Lannister, freeing the people of Kings Landing in a day. That The Hound defeated The Mountain. That the Baratheon bloodline lived on through a surviving son, Gendry. That the Iron Born helped liberate Kings Landing. That Samwell Tarly discovered the true Heir. That Sansa Stark discovered the man who started the War of the Five Kings. That she won the Battle of the Bastards. That she tamed two lions- one as her sworn sword, the other as her Hand. That she had inherited Winterfell, Harrenhal, the Vale and the Riverlands, and the Greyjoy’s of the Iron Islands looked to her. That she saved the True Heir. That she had his heart.

 

“What are you doing here?” Sansa was surprised when she looked up from the papers left on the grand table in front of her from her audiences with the North to see Jon. He looked nervous, and her heart clenched at the sight of him, the bond aching. He was supposed to be in Kings Landing. The people of Westeros needed a leader. They needed a King. “You were supposed to leave this morning.”

Jon nodded as he approached. “I was,” he admitted. “But I needed something before I left.”

Sansa’s brow quirked and she felt a smile tug on her lips. “What did you need, Jon?”

Jon gave her a wolfish smile, dark eyes gleaming. “Council.” As he said the word, he knelt. Sansa, clearly enjoying this game, leaned back in her chair.

 

“Then I will give it, as fairly as I can. Proceed.”

“You are doing a fine job running Winterfell. You ran the North like a true queen. Everyone I’ve spoken to has agreed. The Lords. Brienne. Even Tyrion, and he’s hard to impress.”

Sansa rolled her eyes at the compliment. “They’re my people. I would do anything to keep them happy and safe.”

“Yes,” Jon agreed, “you would. Despite the sacrifices you yourself make. But here is where I need council.”

Sansa stood and moved to stand in front of him, hands clasped delicately. She cocked a brow and Jon looked up at her, his face unreadable.

“What about the people of Westeros?”

 

Sansa felt her breath go. She searched his face, eyes unsure, when his expression changed, all teasing gone. His features softened, his smile gentle, his eyes kind and as familiar to her as her own.

“I may have been born the Heir to the Iron Throne,” Jon started earnestly, “but you were born to be a queen. The North is yours. You are Queen in the North, until your last day. That is indisputable. And I will understand if that is all you want. You suffered for Northern Independence, you suffered in Kings Landing. I understand if you never want to see it again. The Northerners have spoken, and said you are their Queen, that they will follow where you rule. They have their independence, and you are the Queen of the North. There will be no other queen for me, Sansa. You are my Queen. I love you,” he said simply. “And I don’t think I could do this without you. Be my Queen. Rule by my side. As equals.”

He offered his out towards her carefully, half expecting rejection. His words echoed hers to him so many years ago, at the start of something unknown and exquisite. “Where will you go?”

 

Jon. _‘Someone brave, and gentle, and strong.’_ Someone she should have wanted her whole life. The knights and the princes and the kings from the stories. The protector and someone she wanted to protect. The white wolf, the dragon King. The man who still didn’t think he was good enough. Whose darkness she knew as well as her own. Whose soul fit with hers, who she could never be without.

Silence. Footsteps. And then, a hand, sliding into his. She pulled him to his feet, her other hand brushing his face.

“Where will we go?”

 

When Sansa was twenty-one, she got the Dragon King, the White Wolf. It suited her well, for she was the Red Wolf of the North, for wherever she was, the North was what was in her blood, and they loved her for it. She gave them their independence, but they chanted

_‘We know no queen but the queen whose name is Stark.’_

The Iron Throne and its pedestal were destroyed, for they brought nothing but war and madness. Instead a piece of Winterfell was brought with them- the chairs of Ned and Catelyn Stark. Her brother provided wisdom, at ease now the evil was defeated. Her sister still came and went like the wind, but the Little Wolf had always been wild, and she no longer roamed alone, the Stag at her side. The Free Folk were their friends. The Lions were her companions. The Master of Whispers saw to it no child or innocent was left alone. Her sworn sword was her friend. Little Bird was no longer caged, and flew the skies on a dragon, wolf wild and free. Her people were the people of Westeros.

And she would make them love her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it! I could have went way dark, and I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do. But we stan a power couple, so that's what we got! Also I totally whimped out and saved my favs because everybody is probably going to bloody die anyway so they might as well live vaguely happy somewhere, right?   
> I hope you enjoyed and let me know what you think!


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